LEITMOTIFS: HOME

 

 

LEITMOTIFS

1. A Warm Hug of Home

Would the cup of my palms nestle you?

Give you a nestling’s echoing chamber,
where you could trill all you want or can?

That wind behind the trees, would it pick

your notes up and let your song be whole
again, your refrains brave and true again?

Through these woods, troll like a stout

heart whose one crescendo is of gladness
that the day’s night must bring a sunrise

as bright as it is gentle when it presses

your cold back to a warm hug of home,
where you will fearlessly sing your song:

Fly with me to the swaying tree tops!

Reach out for me. I am back. I am home.

2. Winding Your Way Home

My errands get simpler now: cut marks

On trees, branches, rocks, leaves, walls,
wherever I know you will wind your way
coming home. It is a long route back.

But you will find them like those prints

of fallen leaves mottling the lake girdling
bluffs we run to when we retrieve lost
memories that somehow remain clear:

we smell them, we touch them, we feel

them like waning fevers that stay warm
on our flushed faces. We will not forget.
We are condemned to remember. Always.

--ALBERT B. CASUGA