The Country Mice

Where is home?

For Robert Frost “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

This field of canola grows near where my brother and I grew up outside Winnipeg, where my father still resides.

My father and my burgeoning extended family welcomes me home all the time. They welcome everyone. It’s their way, the prairie way.

I still call the prairies home, even though I’ve given that appellation to many other geographies.

Here’s my mother’s take on some rocky plains just north of Winnipeg:

Now here in my home on a rocky ledge, I have my mother’s painting behind me and the glossy Pacific before me.

A new place I’ll call home.