There’s something about the feel of home that grabs you quick and doesn’t let you go. It stays, like an old familiar song playing over and over.

She was a thing of beauty, this city of my childhood, with her tall spires standing on tip toes to touch the clouds. She was a thousand black jewels of crystal pyrite set in gold and silver and fashioned by some unknown colossal hand carefully placing them close together in the modernistic labyrinth I wandered when my spirit was young.

Day or night I roamed her streets with the wolf, Yanteh, my protector, by my side, feeling peace and safely.

She was like a young bride wearing her mother’s wedding dress, proud and pure. In her polished luminescence were brick sidewalks and iron fences reminiscent of mediaeval times.

Sculptures that might have rested near the Coliseum adorned her plazas.

Classical anthems smiled on Yanteh and me, weaving in and out of our footsteps as we crossed her bridges to visit the moors.

Within her boundaries were all of the greatest scientists, poets, writers, and artists. Each majestic painting, every great musical movement or wonder of literature resided in her great halls. To learn was only to ask. To enjoy was only to look and to feel.

We often walked at night,outside the old north city gate into the meadows

drinking in the cricket sounds, the cool night air and the sight of the city at rest.

Standing on the hill outside the city limits and seeing her millions of lights reflected in the water near took my breath away. Lovely, lovely was my home.

Twas at dusk I stood with tears streaming down my cheeks and watched her sink. Yanteh howled as the earth groaned deep within itself and gave a mighty shudder.

It might have taken moments or it might have been hours when the waters came bubbling,

first washing her already clean streets and then licking her buildings and towers like giant lollipops. The lights still shone as the water flowed over her and I wept harder as I watched them disappear, one by one, while the stars in sympathy closed their eyes until dark was complete and silence echoed across the deep.

After a long while, we walked on, Yanteh and I, to other homes in other times but never will I forget her breathless beauty

before the water dragons came to take her down, together with all of her treasures, to hide her in the bowels of our telestial planet far within the terra firma. I will miss her, I will miss her. .

Many hills and valleys we trod, stopping here and there and tasting the cultures that were offered to us on a golden platter that we had chosen.

Our lessons came, the way we had assigned, and time passed on the way it does when you’re not watching. Time does not stop to wait until we are ready. What is time?

It could have been one lifetime or a dozen. And then I looked around and Yanteh too,

my only friend, had vanished. My mind clouded and I forgot the places we had been, forgot how it was to have somebody guide and protect me. I forgot how it was to laugh just because I felt good and knew I was loved. I forgot joy in the seriousness of learning how to be alone, and I was alone in a land of storm and winds.

I felt homesick but for where? I felt lonely but for who?

It is a thing of beauty my home of this childhood. The seagulls dive to the blue-green water and onto the spongy wet sand hunting for tasty morsels, scolding each other declaring their territories.

The waves crash against ageless rocks sounding like booming thunder and then rush away leaving the shore sizzling like eggs frying on an open skillet.

The green hills gently slumber in the quiet singing of the wind though the pines.

The fluffy clouds adorn themselves in pink make up for their evening date to dance with the sun.

Alabaster cities shine at the feet of white mountain peaks. Streams giggle, birds sing and every kind of flower smiles at its own blossom.

Many roamed the streets day or night in the arms of safely in the olden days. I did. I remember walking in the middle of main street at midnight and never having fear of being accosted or even interfered with. I let the warm night air envelope me in peace, leaving me a space to walk and think alone. Everything around belonged to me when dark descended and the world slept.

They say the greatest artists, scientists, poets and writers come from this century.

Majestic paintings, great musical movements and fine literature are all here to be enjoyed.

Soon, they say, my childhood home will be gone, changed in the twinkling of an eye to a dead planet. I look at her through eyes that have already seen too much. To lose her beauty and her wonder is a hurtful thing and it fills my heart with sorrow to gaze upon her treasures and realize they will be gone.

As I watch tomorrow and see her swaying on her axis and finally spinning away to find a new place, I hear someone sobbing there in the dark. Is it me? All that beauty, that bright hope, all that wonder of life too early burned out.....ashes.....it must be me then.

As I cried my faithless tears and wept pools of despair at all that was lost to me, I saw a light in the darkness. And then amid the emptiness, I spotted her in renewed glory resting in her new safe place.

She was a vision of light, balance and harmony. Out of the deep, with the thunder of a million storms, arose a highway. Bubbling water receded from spires that looked like jewels.

Armies marched to the music that had been playing all along, I just hadn’t heard it singing. Both homes came into my view at last and I realized they had always been there, the old residing in the new, the new blending in with the old. It was the same play with different scenery. And I was not bereft as I had supposed, because both homes were the same and I ran shouting because Yanteh waited for me grinning at the gates.