Everyone Comes From Somewhere

Everyone comes from somewhere.

Everyone has a past.

Everyone is somewhere first.

Everyone is somewhere last.

Deep in the heart of buildings

scattered about online

packed away in boxes

hiding in cupboards

are fragments and hints

about your life and mine.

You catch a glimpse of your name,

you might suddenly see an address,

sometimes it’s typed,

because your name was recorded by an official;

sometimes it’s writing that looks like

it was written by spiders.

Everyone comes from somewhere.

Everyone has a past.

Everyone is somewhere first.

Everyone is somewhere last.

These are the stones on a path:

a story

of how people travel.

These are the stones on a path

that I found,

the story that I unravelled.

Everyone comes from somewhere.

Everyone has a past.

Everyone is somewhere first.

Everyone is somewhere last.

© Michael Rosen, from On the Move: Poems About Migration, Walker, 2020