The Return

How it stirs my imagination. For instance, in the picture, were this mother and daughter awaiting the return of husband and father from the Civil War? The engraver was known for portrait engravings of Civil War heroes and high officials, especially on The Union side of the War. I found no specific record of this particular portrait, but Perine lived from 1837 - 1885, so it's obviously of that era.

We've all experienced a quest for a "return" to a place, whether physical, geographical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual, in which we felt "more ourselves" than we were feeling wherever we were on another plane of existence, but one lacking that "zone" of belonging, - truly belonging. It was for that - we were longing, . . . . as perhaps were the mother and daughter in the portrait here.

For a return to occur, there must have been a beginning, a duration, and a departure from to what or where is being returned. How long that had lasted or how recently it had been departed affects the kind of return it is, of course, but all returns have those elements in their history. Whether or not the return is by choice or whether it is due to other circumstances distinguishes each return, as well.

Actually, each morning brings a return to wakefulness, with a new day providing new opportunities and experiences. We celebrate 'The New Year' with various mindsets, including hope and anticipation, or dread and regret. We return to our lives in many ways and at many times. If we have nurtured our mindsets to expecting and building upon good things for which we've prepared, we enter each old or new threshold with high expectations and realistic hope.

Of course, there may be returns, not by choice, but as a result of consequences or our karma, for which we didn't quest and perhaps had no desire. But the circumstances 'ended us up' returning somewhere and that event itself may have opened up completely 'new' experiences for us. Sometimes those can be major turning points in our lives. How often might we have vigorously, deliberately or even casually blocked such a return, never to know what it might have brought?

As I recall my own returns and review my years of poetry written and reflecting those experiences, I find it an intriguing process. I can make the poetry connections with the theme of returns if it captures a moment in any of the historic stages which resulted in my return 'from' one state of living 'to' another at which I was to arrive. I won't explain each poem, but trust that you will sense it.

Perhaps a picture captures some non-verbal feelings best, such as the guarded, yet urgent anticipation on the faces of the mother and daughter in the picture. Yet words also capture and describe aspects of those feelings, and they may be even more multi-dimensional, and therefore may be more obscure. But if they remind you of your own experiences, or even if simply thinking about your own returns so far, this profound interspection will have been worthwhile. It will be a return to some of my own odyssey for me!

As you've surely guessed, the main theme for this collection of my poetry is personal returnings, in a sense. May that sense hum or strum throughout.

Being

Borders fluctuate

And vanish under

Closer view.

The crystal core

Inside them

Remains intact

Throughout.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

They say you can't go home again.

It's true.

But some times

You may try,

To let the mist disperse.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

How painful,

Yet pleasant

To outgrow each step

One finds to take.

Beautiful growth

Radially;

And inwardly

Grows free.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Please know -

If I go away to grow,

It is because

I must.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Labyrinth of life,

Taking turns

On straightaways,

Moving by the feel

Of what is real,

And sensing

New directions

As they come and go

Too swiftly

For analysis,

Perhaps to move

Into the light again

To know the better

Turns.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Clods of sod

Blood and mud,

Tear-soaked

Voyage out of time

And back again.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

To grow

I just let go

And know

I live.

I must fall freely

In uncertainty

Without restraint

Trust the landing

To be soft

But moving

Certainty

Would bruise me,

Use me up.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

When you get where you're going

You'll be where you started.

The journey is the thing.

Experience it fully.

It is all there.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Sheer experience.

I must let go

And feel

Whatever this is.

Not from yesterday;

Tomorrow is tomorrow.

Simply this, and now.

If I exist, it's here, it's now.

If I do not exist,

It's here, it's now;

It's this ~

How marvelous!

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

How tenuous is life, really. How useless to cling to things, and yet they might aid continuity, if only to remind that there are cycles, trends, efforts, failures and successes throughout human history.

Perhaps the question is: have we learned anything or are the things to which we adhere blocking our view and obscuring the clarity?

If we were to return or to move forward, to what will it be? More of the same, or better? I wonder.

Take heart, my heart ~
For you are not alone.

At last
The notes you sing
Ring answers in your key;
For home is where
The heart finds comfort.

And you are home
For me.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay