I remember, when I was a child, learning by heart the poem ‘I Remember, I Remember’, written by Thomas Hood in 1844. The opening lines stayed with me throughout my life, through many moves and different countries.
I remember how the opening lines got me thinking: “I remember, I remember, / The house where I was born”, because I was born in a hospital and wondered what it was like to be born in a house.
As I grew into adulthood, I took the lines with me, but with the house of my grandparents, where I grew up, making more sense. It was an anchor for me while I discovered a little more of the world. That house still exists, but it belongs to someone else and has probably changed a lot, as has life in modern times, which is very different from Thomas Hood’s life.
sun blinks through windows –
lilac will always smell sweet
while robins build nests
Kim M. Russell, 26th May 2026
Yesterday Frank hosted Haibun Monday at the dVerse Poets Pub, with the theme of remembrance, about which we have written many times before. In the UK, Remembrance Sunday is always held in November, so I stretched the theme a bit
writing in north norfolk 
A clear and lovingly descriptive remembrance – we hold homes in our bones perhaps – Jae
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Thank you, Jae. I think we do. Where I live now will stay with me until I die.
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The house we grew up in, holds ALL our earliest, memories, and, that is, what, stays, when we, remember that, very first, home, associating it with, the feelings of warmth, of, love.
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