Poem ‘Poetry for the soul’ by Alan Wherry

"At home in exile", quipped the poet Mahon
Made no sense.
Ostracized, banished, in exilium,
It was hard to be any of these at home.
For me it was complex,
I was born in the right place.
It just took me an inordinately long time to see it.

Unspoken shibboleths of the north
They knew what you meant without you saying a word
As alien to me
As a palm tree on Napoleon's Nose.

More than halfway through life's journey,
I found myself
Silent in a host of saints and angels
In a blue, leaky circus tent, in Cabella, Liguria
On concrete steps Ganapatipule, Maharashtra.
In a barn near Canajoharie, upstate in New York.
A scout camp, Nizamuddin, New Delhi
Sleeping in Red Army tents in primordial forest, Gorny Altai
In a desert cloudburst.
Lake Piru, California, USA.
Shudycamps, Cambridgeshire, the New Jerusalem.

No strangers anywhere
I knew them all from wav back
From their vibrations, from their hearts.

Home is where I sleep tonight.

In Shri Mataji's room at 4 am I knew her divinity.