UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

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