6 poems

Poems About Moving Away

Six original poems about leaving a familiar place, packing a home, crossing distance and learning the practical shape of somewhere new.

Moving away is both an ending and a list of ordinary tasks: labels, keys, train times, forwarding addresses and one last look at an empty room.

These poems make space for relief, homesickness, excitement and the strange delay before a new place begins to feel like yours.

quiet·reflection

Forwarding Address

Write the new address carefully.
The street has a tree in its name
and a number I still forget.

For a while, every envelope
will know where I live
before I do.

raw·reading

Last Night in the Flat

The curtains are down.
The rooms have lost their weather.
We eat from one saucepan
sitting on the floor.

Without our furniture
the flat returns our voices
as if already practising
for someone else.

tender·message

Platform Six

Do not wave too early.
The train waits, changes its mind,
opens every door again.

We laugh at the long goodbye
until the rails begin
their clean argument with distance.

hopeful·reflection

The New Grocery Store

I learn the new town
by where it keeps the bread,
which queue moves quickly,
who talks at the till.

Home begins without music:
a basket, exact change,
the same milk found again.

playful·reading

What Fits in the Car

The lamp does not fit.
The plant bends against the window.
We leave two chairs by the bins.

A life becomes surprisingly clear
when measured by a boot
that will not quite close.

warm·message

Two Weather Reports

Now I check two kinds of rain:
the one against my window
and the one falling where you are.

Distance has made me bilingual
in weather,
fluent in here
and still listening for there.

Forwarding Address

Last Night in the Flat

Platform Six

The New Grocery Store

What Fits in the Car

Two Weather Reports

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