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Invitation to Poetry: Going Home

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).

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55 Responses

  1. Home is such an expansive word filling my chest with such grace and peace. The cinquain seemed a simple yet powerful form of expression for me.

  2. There is a crispness in the morning air these days.
    I feel it in my bones. It surrounds me. It lives in me. It calls me home.
    Time to remember and honor during the next few months of birth and rebirth.
    Birth days.
    My mom, myself, October babies.
    My dad, November baby.
    My brother, December baby.
    Re birth days.
    My dad passes away @72 on a crisp October night. His soul re birthed. Traveling home.
    My mom passes away @78 on a crisp November night. Her soul re birthed. Traveling home.
    I rejoice when the crispness in the air returns each year. I remember who I am.
    I remember I am home.

  3. Dear Christine,
    again, I am submitting my text in Spanish, with my English translation; …. perhaps with a not- so- poetically sound, as you read it allowd
    .
    I hope you can still feel te spirit of your image in my translated words.

    palabras como polen
    avientan su audacia en la aurora:

    el universo entero se detiene
    por un instante
    cuando el silencio
    se va lejos

    ***

    words, as pollen
    fanning their boldness in the dawn:

    the entire universe stops for a moment
    when silence
    fades

    ***
    blessings

    isa

  4. Home as a meandering toward an actual place, a pause and a shudder of this is the place where I first welcomed in an intimate experience and became as is known as enveloped partuition in fact.
    Home as the signal that all is well, that no matter your indiscretions you can recognize that there is a call to you.
    Home as the basket of soft and intermingling flesh of puppies in love with the teet.

    Home as my home

  5. There are many addresses
    above
    words, line up with love and care
    like lawns and gardens
    and mailboxes with numbers written
    so the postman knows
    where to drop the letters.
    i get mostly junkmail these days
    flyers with promises
    of specials and fleeting opportunities.
    I don’t read them.
    One year I used them as mulch
    in my garden.
    So many words, I forget
    that they are special.

    Great Spirit: You are extravagant
    with your savings and blessings.
    There are no fleeting opportunities with you.
    Each heart is your mailbox
    and you send letters
    with words
    to redeem
    forever
    and specials
    that have no time limit

  6. Tell me where to go
    I can’t hear your voice
    This place is so loud
    Do I have a choice?
    I go along
    My decisions prevail
    Will I follow me
    Can I then fail?
    Do the salmon who swim upstream to the north
    Wrestle between that and another due course?
    Where is that beating deep in my heart?
    Will all of this worry stop the fire, not start?
    Dear Mr.Salmon, please guide me home.
    Jesus, jump in my boat, tell me to cast my net down.
    And now for some quiet.
    Shh. Everything is new.
    Stillness and rest in the presence of You.
    Maybe the thing about the salmon and their journey back home
    They knew where to go when they saw they were there all along.

  7. If home is where the heart is
    there remains a piece of mine
    in the apple tree, on Hickory Street,
    with abundant branches, easily maneuvered
    into a sanctuary of leaves.

    If home is where the heart is
    there remains a remnant of mine
    in the Atlantic Ocean surf,
    the ebb and flow always and forever
    creating a haven of calm.

    If home is where the heart is,
    there remains a trace of mine
    on any labyrinth path, under each night sky – soil and stars –
    unfolding territories of peace.

    If home is where the heart is
    mine rests here as well, in this house, this room, this desk
    with my companion muse
    giving shelter and refuge.

    And if home is where the heart is
    a fragment of mine abides in Savannah
    where my beloved is with friends
    who bid him rest along the way to our hearth.