COMING HOME: LIGHT THROUGH A CRACKED MIRROR

MY POEM TODAY is for a friend who goes back to old haunts and finds there are memories that need to be purged of their pain. Where, what place do these come from? Where do they belong?


COMING HOME: LIGHT THROUGH A CRACKED MIRROR


“Ring the bells that can still ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in” ~ Leonard Cohen

How far have you gone from all that you were,
little chipped stone from a hidden tributary,
little pebble that has yet to reach the bottom
of the well to hear its thump and come to rest?

How far, indeed, that you must finally beg
to be taken home? Where, what place, what
troubled spaces have you been all these years?
Bitter years, you say almost in descant candor.

Take you home? But where do you belong?
If I knew, if I could follow that map long
faded in your doleful heart that has dogged
every fickle chord from every pied piper—

If I could find every pied-a-terre you’ve been
that I might collect the shattered life pieces
left of your gypsy heart so I could remould
them to our heart’s desire, I would. I will.

Take you home. Prop you up, start you up
once again whence you came, where
your heart is not merely a sieve for sorrow
or pain, but where it is a fortress of care.
---ALBERT B. CASUGA