Walk the rails under a high blue sky. Find the sag in the leaning fence, and step--carefully--over rusted wire. Follow a peninsula of blond grasses through a lake of loam, and come, at last, to the timber's edge where gray branches trace the sky and rose hips curl near purple canes.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
less
Forgive me, sometimes
my heart goes paging
through the catalogue
of absences--falling, always,
over the well-worn category: home.
Hmm, the intriguing paradox at the heart of this poem is how "home" has entered "the catalogue/ of absences." Perhaps it's a common paradox. I think of the novelist Thomas Wolfe who called one of his books You Can't Go Home Again.
Home is where the heart is, runs the old saw. And the heart is often far away, more at home in days gone by than in the present moment.
Thanks, Tom! I caught a bit of an NPR interview with a therapist specializing in "ambiguous grief" this past Sunday. The longing for home fits that well, I think. Home is both here and not here, at the same time.
Hmm, the intriguing paradox at the heart of this poem is how "home" has entered "the catalogue/ of absences." Perhaps it's a common paradox. I think of the novelist Thomas Wolfe who called one of his books You Can't Go Home Again.
ReplyDeleteHome is where the heart is, runs the old saw. And the heart is often far away, more at home in days gone by than in the present moment.
Thank you for this poem!
Thanks, Tom! I caught a bit of an NPR interview with a therapist specializing in "ambiguous grief" this past Sunday. The longing for home fits that well, I think. Home is both here and not here, at the same time.
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