Home
A poem by Marc Manganaro

Home
“We may never pass this way again.” – Seals and Croft  

We always find our way back,
Whether by the long way around or the shortcut,
And not to one place only,
If indeed these are places.
Some we thread our way back to in our dreams,
Others come blazing forth in our waking:
An old photograph of me on the living room sofa
And suddenly I feel my fingernail on fabric
That’s gone to the dumpster some fifty years before,
Or the smell of coffee this morning 
And there she is,
My mother at the stove
About to take hold of the percolator coffee pot,
And there’s Grandma Nettie in her robe
Seated at the kitchen table with its Formica top
Dipping an anisette cookie
Into her steaming milky cup.
Songs don’t always get it right–
We may never pass this way again:
Oh, but we do,
And you know that,
Lover, fellow pilgrim, friend,
You with the living room of childhood
Precisely mapped out in your imagination,
You who hears a song
That in an instant trips you back
To an arrangement of furniture
That you never knew until now
Mattered so much.
Now your memory only needs
To people the sofa and chairs
With those you love,
The living and the dead:
A grandmother long gone,
A sister departed too soon,
And your mother, your father,
Just look at them,
Oh how young they are here back at home.
And you can feel free
To put your smiling self in pajamas at age twelve
Next to your teenage brother now age seventy-two.
It’s not hard to do, this going home,
And indeed you can’t help it,
Your smiling self just knowing
That you will always, always
Pass this way again.

About the Author:

Marc Manganaro is an author who has written books published by Princeton University Press and Yale University Press, and his work has appeared in journals such as The Missouri Review, Public Culture, and The Yale Journal of Criticism. Recent poems of his are being showcased in the May 2024 issue of Poetry Pacific, and his poem “Home” is appearing on July 5th in Poetry Breakfast.  He is a former recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and some years ago served as Editor-in-Chief of The Carolina Quarterly.  A native of Nebraska, he currently resides in New Orleans.

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