(From Warsaw): what stands out

…on the train to Warsaw: farmsteads, small strips of land, meadows. (When was the last time that I had seen a meadow in the States?)

A hand plough pulled by a horse, an orchard, a forest. Dirt roads with farm wagon tracks. No cars. Chickens let loose in a field, willows bending down, wooden fences made of brittle gray boards, unpainted.

Is this my home? Is this no longer my home?

Returning with sentimental thoughts but also returning with an understanding that because I left so long ago, I think it is no longer possible for me to live here (even as it is not possible for me to feel that home is elsewhere).

Wild lilacs blooming against the side of the tracks, a small train station – Dziadowki – passed slowly. No one there anyway, no one in sight anywhere, in fact.