Hello, Chicago, Goodbye: Part 2

A decade ago I started writing a poem entitled "Last Time Home." It was, I think written after a visit to my hometown and stemming from the idea that, finally, I would leave the place behind. This is the first stanza: 

When we were ten we believed the myth of trains derailed
by a single penny. And we believed the myth of a boy
floating face up in the frozen pond until the men one morning
cut through the ice and pulled him free. We believed
in manhood and fighting a good fight, in developing biceps.
And most of us believed in Nixon.

Then there is some sentimental gibberish in the middle, and the ending goes like this:

To those who are buried here, I leave everything.
I even leave you Nixon.

The poem was never completed as far as I can tell, though I've got 10 drafts on my computer. And looking at it now, what I'd written was not very good. That sentiment, though, does linger, and the longer I'm in the Midwest, the stronger it grows: the inability to separate from a part of the country that has not been mine for a long time.

Perhaps we carry a sense of place with us. Or, perhaps those of us who aren't quite content do, and we remain unhealthily attached to the past--and that is why a poem like "Last Time Home" cannot truly be finished or written well.