Homecoming

Homecoming: Wild Card

I decided to use this poem as a wild card because I believe it shows a different side to my writing style. This poem is a little bit more formally written than my others, as I tend to prefer reading and writing Modern and Imagist poetry. I also really like this poem overall, as I tried to show two sides of the same story, of a girl coming home to her childhood home for the first time after leaving.

I

Look: the parameters of her life once so distinct and abrupt,

her old life in a mountain’s palms cupped.

Walking the fine line between shade and sun,

she fights the urge to simply forget propriety and run.

A homecoming long awaited lies within reach,

her butterflies flying free with every footstep.

She remembers the canning days of endless prep,

sneaking away from mother’s kitchen to pick a perfect peach;

and eat it there on the back porch looking at the endless sunset,

and thinking to herself about all the people she’s now met

out in the infinite world beyond the farm’s fences she’d peer through.

She hums an old song as she creaks open the hinges rusty and true,

thinking of lessons to learn and lessons to teach.

II

Breathe in, and out, and in again,

waiting for that noise she can tell from the call of every wren;

Creak comes the noise, so loud and present

startling her from a moment reminiscing spent:

pretending she didn’t notice her sneaking feet,

leaving the kitchen through the back door,

acting like she had finished every chore,

dreaming of leaving her long-held country seat.

Fingers pressed so delicately against the screen fine meshed,

deciding not to break into daughter’s dream so fully fleshed,

So many times she thought about speaking into that air,

but merely watched and prayed she out in the big world would take care;

now a face so missed is embraced in a homecoming so sweet.