UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
Why do we return to/what we know? Do we uncover any anchors/or nets. Homeward bound, /the song goes, which means heading for home/or tied up in looking. ---From “Homeward Bound” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 07-27-11
Cups, bric-a-brac, milestone pictures, pillows,
even rarely-washed security blankets spell it:
it is the smell of knowing that makes us run
to her stove as soon as we drop our wee world
of toy trains, biscuit cans, disrobed barbies,
and ask if favourite cakes are cooking in the oven.
It stays with us, this habit of pinning the tail
on memorial behinds. We know them well.
On the darkest nights, on most tempestuous times,
haven’t we gone back home quiet and blindfolded?
They know we would grow up and go away.
Folks enter into one-way contracts like these.
Then home becomes hazy in uncharted distances.
Looking ties us down, we follow familiar scents
only to lose them along the way. Pavement arrows
do not point to where the heart lingers and stays.
Is there no clear map to this refuge? In the fog,
how can the faithless promise he is home at last?
An undiscovered country before long, home
turns up around the bend, but we also find out
that it is the nook from which we cannot return.
---Albert B. Casuga
07-27-11
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