Turning Home

My breaks skid as I roll down the high street 

in the sea-grey drizzle of early night, I find 

home comes in sweeping comparisons.  

The stark familiarity of this tacky end of the market  

against that weird road in my new place, my remembrance 

of the pissed-off peddlers, gaps I can speed

and squeeze through, the order of the lights,  

becomes breath-mist in November, because here it is 

and I’m reassured. I don’t pass it by. And in it I find 

the tick of old wheels in old time, the crosshatch 

of brickwork like other brickwork, I find 

I’m not sure which home is filling my lungs as I pant and pedal,  

warming my thighs in the brisk. My mind reaches  

left and down, where the milkshake shop spilled 

into the RSPCA, I find  

my map is outdated, attempting to trace  

roads some three hundred miles or  

five potholed years from here. The dial  

of the town, the wide miles around it, 

taught me home is inevitable. Grinding my gears uphill  

and always returning to the same brown back gate.  

I extricate myself. Disassemble rusty bearings. 

I refuted the attachment when I was settled here,  

had unlinked my chain and not found new purchase, 

kept my shoes on,  

blurred through the market when I had to go that way, 

blurred out the recollection of pedestrianised brick streets, 

as the years stacked up and I relearnt 

home as an unfamiliar concept, 

I’m just passing through. 

I get my feet on the pedals and press down  

and the wheels run in circles.