Welcome to the Abbey’s 53rd Poetry Party!
I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your own poem. Scroll down and add it in the comments section below. Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog (if you have one) and encourage others to come join the party! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post)
On Sunday, September 25th, I will draw a name at random from the participants and the winner will receive a free registration spot in my upcoming online retreat Honoring Saints & Ancestors: Peering through the Veil (October 30-November 19, 2011).
I adore the season of autumn with the crisp air, the days growing shorter, and the brilliance of the world around me as nature prepares for the sleep of winter. This year I am pondering the image of home in her many facets: the Pacific Northwest salmon who right now make the arduous swim up river to return to their birthplace and lay the eggs of the new generation (and losing their lives in the process), the birds who will soon begin their journeys south in the great mystery of migration, in the releasing of ruby and tangerine leaves from branches and drifting downward back to the earth, source of life and home, and in the memory of my mother who took the great journey Home many years ago during this season.
Our photo prompt for this week is from my time on Lake Michigan last week. Something about the vastness of her waters against the evening sky evokes this sense of the primordial source for me and where we all return. My teaching partner, Betsey, calls her “Mother Lake.”
What does the metaphor of “going home” evoke for you? What are the longings that autumn stirs in your heart? I invite you to write a poem about your own process of going home.
*Registration* for two upcoming online retreats is now open: Honoring Saints & Ancestors: Peering through the Veil (October 30-November 19, 2011) and Advent 2011–Birthing the Holy: Becoming a Monk in the World (November 27-December 24, 2011).
55 Responses
‘It happened so fast’ she cried
and did not say ‘I have no home’
Her voice sounds older,
she breathes heavily down the phone
‘all my things are gone’
Nodding I look at the fragments of my childhood home
spread now around my own home
scattered between us like
someone knocked down a tower of bricks
She sits sad, confused, and lonely,
‘I always hoped I would die there’ she sighs
At home there is a river
that, over too much time
for memory, niched
its way through a mountain,
making a way where there was
no way. At home that river
feeds leafy flesh so rich
they age to majestic purples
this dusky time of year. At home
my parents also survive on
that river’s passage, but
their veins grow thick through
papery skin losing its pinkish hue.
At home the leaves will fall
into the river’s flow, be swept through
a mountain gap and into mulch. At
home they will one day be one
with the mountain and trees
and, eventually, no longer be
in memory.
powerful images of home
thank you
pulling off stubborn
mud caked rubber boots
collapsing inside
to sleepily feast on stew
So happy to see the return of the poetry party!
Going Home
Someone once said
you can never go home,
and in a sense
it is true.
We cannot return to the past,
to the moments of firsts—
first time being held,
safe and warm
in mama’s soft lap;
first kiss stolen in the darkness
as moths
flung themselves
at the porch light;
first taste of goodbye,
packing the car for college
laughter from the card game
coming through the screen door.
Going home is new
each time—
new memories are made;
new places become “home.”
Curtains are hung,
tables are set,
guests are welcomed—
but at its heart, going home is about
presence,
awareness,
now.
May this and every moment
find you going,
ever returning,
home.
“The Old Maple”
The tree stands tall
And old –
had already sunk its roots deep into the heart
when we arrived thirty odd years ago.
Who knows
how long
it stood watch over lilac, pine, barn and cow,
its trunk full of secrets and memories.
How it comforted
brothers –
one blue, one gray, lying beneath its shade,
leaving only bullets and bones behind.
And the rain
silent, sad
that mingled with mother’s tears
when Flanders’ fields kept back her sons.
Then, ah peace!
A child, small
there found Austen and Bilbo
among the wide and changing leaves.
And solved mysteries
with Nancy
and the Twins and the Boxcar Children
while cradled in its strong and loving arms.
I stand now before it
a woman grown –
my life thick with experience and history
my heart full of secrets and memories.
This tree, this land
strong, solid —
brings the comfort as of old friends,
and keeps me grounded and alive.
(c) May 2011
Glad to see you had this (c)’d! Beautiful and brings tears to my eyes.
I can see the tree and feel the life of all who passed it’s way.
Home is four years old,
my mother up so very early, baking pies for a Thanksgiving feast for many guests.
I don’t remember the feast,
but I remember feeling safe and warm and happy.
Home is five years old,
the snow falling thick and fast.
My parents waking me up,
no work or school today!
We all sit on my small bed watching the snow fall past the window,
laughing, talking,
I snuggle amongst them feel safe and warm and happy.
Home is eleven years old,
my parents telling me our home must now come apart.
Crying, crying the first of many tears as we drive away,
leaving my father behind.
Home is twenty-eight years old,
it is two days after Christmas day.
You tell me you are leaving.
And then you are gone forever.
Home is thirty-seven years old,
it is two days after Christmas day,
my brother tells me my mother has died.
Home is the place where I am broken,
it is where God meets me and says, “Hush, hush. I am here.”
I ask why? Why is it like this?
God replies, “This beautiful world and everyone in it is broken. You will find your true home in me.”
Each day is a surrender,
to a heavenly home I cannot yet see.
Thank you – you have put into words something that often cannot be said in words but is known by many…
I am peace
I feel safe
I am at home
But the voice calls
Time to move, time to change, time to grow
A new pattern emerges
Home again until the Spirit speaks
Time to move, time to change, time to grow
Home is not a person,place or thing
But the Indwelling of the Spirit
My Fulfilling of God’s Call
To me, home is not a place. It’s the people with whom we cycle through time.
Dreaming the Future
We stand, two solitary figures,
atop the crumbling rim,
looking over the blackened ruin
of a post-industrial landscape
pockmarked by death.
No raging tempest tears at our clothing,
but a mere breeze, a soft sigh of warm wind.
No crashing thunderbolts illuminate our
darkling sky, merely the waning light
of a dying moon and her wavering
companion stars.
Enough light to silhouette the tarred
and twisted steel and to weakly reflect,
mirrored on melted streets by shattered
shards of glass.
We are here for a purpose;
re-joined at the end of things,
our lives separate for decades.
The breeze lifts his dark hair as it does mine.
The raven lace at his throat stirs and
the jet silk of my skirt billows behind me.
The silverescent light is enough
to illumine his pale, delicate features
as green meet green, arms surround
and mouth touches mouth.
Lips part, hand joins hand and,
looking over the desolation,
we step beyond the horizon
to a new beginning.
Stunning!!
every moment is a new beginning
Christine, I wrote this poem in 2006…
“Concentric Circles”
… spoken long ago in yesterday,
between sleeping and waking,
heard again today as if brand new.
Words held out and continually repeated
as Invitation, the call to Mystery.
“Leave your comfort zone,
the safety of this place.
Move to
the next space,
the far distant shore,
the new horizon.”
Each movement
plunges me deeper into Mystery,
yet, always seems to bring me Home.
I am also a part of a poetry group (Circle Way Poets), and our challenge for Sunday’s meeting is to write a sonnet. You just supplied my inspiration! So this is my newest “going home” poem. Thank you!
The Return
In order to come home,
one simply has to leave,
but first a faint and distant gnome
penetrates space and time to serve its cleave.
Distant shores spread before me now
and open mouth speaks out its vow.
What lies before me is only a guess,
but ‘tis my duty to acquiesce.
How long, how far a journey must one make
to stranger places still unknown
before the heart begins to ache,
and for its center starts to groan.
Circling back and returning once more
finding home is my own back door.
This was fun. I’ll post you on my blog!
Sheila Conner
There is no place like home
when you’ve been on a roam
in a place far away
for a lot of long days.
The experience sours
When you must spend 12 hours
In the smallest of airports
(With a time change, of course).
It will be very late
when I get to my state
and I land in my bed
And lay down my tired head.
Thank you–thank you very much. :)