Old John

He has lived and worked in big cities far from his first home
New York, Sydney, Montreal and Paris and Rome
He has been to south America, India, Indonesia and China and Japan
One might say of John that he is quite a well traveled man

He has seen and heard the lions roaring and heard the hunting dogs bark
In the great Serengeti Africa's renowned wildlife park
He has been to the Arctic and Antarctic the great lands of snow
Where in Winter the seas are frozen and the icy winds blow

Yet despite his years of absence old John feels nostalgia for his first home far away
The old town where he first looked on the light of day
Though he left on his travels in his physical prime
And he has not been back there in decades of time

The memories of what was in him does remain
Of his first home and in his visualizations he goes back again
To the town park where as a boy with his young friends ball games he played
Good old memories live in us and refuse for to fade

The town he was raised in he may never more see
As he remains wheelchair bound from a motoring accident he is eighty three
That cost him the lives of their teenage son Tom and Anna his wife
He has known of his sorrows but then such is life

From the town he was raised in he is living quite far
And from here it cannot be reached by a motor car
That nostalgia outlives wanderlust perhaps not a lie
Old John he would love to go home for to die.