My hometown is between a red barn and a blue silo separated from Every other town By cornfields Rows and rows Of cornfields In endless miles Of infinite horizons How I longed to flee The humble beauty of this landscape The jet black fields and the shiny grain bins The gravel roads and barbed wire fences The sweetly cloying smell of silage Where we were not like everyone else So static Nature cycling But nothing changing My hometown is between The river and the square The long walk over the stone bridge The dark water glistening below The last mile before flowing into The ocean How I longed to be there The city, the salty smell of the harbor the click of my boots on sharp brick and wet cobblestones So lovely, so full of gravitas The walls green with ivy But I was a visitor Looking through a window My hometown is between A mill and an arched bridge The smell of birch and pine A city set in the longest winter With ice globes and frozen lakes Sparkling silver and white So silent so lovely How I hoped to be inside But it was cold and insular Where will they find me now Floating in the river the lake, the sea Or by a small pond Surrounded by gently sloping trees Sitting on a small dock Listening to the sound of frogs In the night Breathing in the humble beauty of the rows and rows of cornfields At dawn My heart has been shaped in the shadows Of all my hometowns All the hometowns I have left
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