YORKTOWN
I’ve returned to my hometown. Chlorine dries in my throat,
my lips chap and crack, the neighborhood pool sits emptied.
My spent days scatter like parched leaves in the grass
that sprouts wildly between the chain links. I think I can settle
into my old self, ride my bicycle along the alfalfa paths,
sing along with Donovan, Wear your love like heaven.
I try my childhood on for size, sitting on a summer
dock, dangling chicken wings on strings for crabs,
swimming across the creek to the sandy beach,
among stinging nettles sighing with nostalgia.
I linger over the sugar-footed cat buried in the field,
my German shepherd pup broken in the wheelbarrow,
under a blanket. I hear Tut leashed furiously to the clothesline.
I’m the movement and sadness on the swing by the pool,
for hundreds of hours after heartbreak, my coat
pulled tight around me, a knit cap on my head,
tears freezing on my cheeks. Around me, January sprouts
in gnarled trees, the baseball field hard underfoot. At home,
I taste tuna fish and olives, jiggle the Yahtzee dice in my palm,
smell the jumble of lipstick-stained filters in my mother’s ashtrays.
When I walk home from the bus stop, I see her face peer
from the folds of the dining room draperies, then vanish.
It isn’t long before everyone knows that she walked in front
of a neighbor’s Volkswagen bus. She wasn’t hurt, but – still.
I walk stoically through the days and pretend that nothing happened,
because the last thing I want is to be different. There are mornings
when I put on the crinoline dress, lace socks, patent leather shoes, and
stories bloom in my head while the house crumples around my feet.
*November 20, 2001*
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“POETRY” Invitation: I invite you to write a poem of any poetic form on your own blog about a particular travel destination. Or you can write about travel in general. Concentrate on any intention you set for your poetry.
In this case, I wrote about what it was like to travel back to my hometown in Yorktown, Virginia.
You can either set your own poetic intentions, or use one of the prompts I’ve listed on this page: writing prompts: poetry. (This page is a work in process). You can also include photos, of course.
Include the link in the comments below by Thursday, June 6 at 1:00 p.m. EST. When I write my post in response to this challenge on Friday, June 7, I’ll include your links in that post.
This will be an ongoing invitation, on the first Friday of each month. Feel free to jump in at any time. 🙂
I hope you’ll join in our community. I look forward to reading your posts!
the ~ wander.essence ~ community
I invite you all to settle in and read a few posts from our wandering community. I promise, you’ll be inspired. 🙂
I am traveling from April 4 to May 10. If I cannot respond to or add your links due to wi-fi problems or time constraints, please feel free to add your links in both this post and my next scheduled post. If I can’t read them when you post them, I will get to them as soon as I can. Thanks for your understanding! 🙂
Thanks to all of you who wrote poetic posts following intentions you set for yourself. 🙂
I love how you are “trying your childhood on for size” and giving us tantalising snippets of what it was like. Where are you now Cathy? The world continues to call you….
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Thanks so much, Pauline, for reading and for your comment. I’m glad you liked that line about trying my childhood on for size.
I was in Italy when this post published, but I’m home now. After 37 days of travel in Morocco and Italy, I was getting a little travel weary, so I’m happy to be settling back in. 🙂
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You will never run out of material for your blog. You have such an interesting life. I enjoy following your journeys
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Thanks so much, Pauline. I certainly do seem to be accumulating quite a backlog of experiences. I felt really travel weary after this last trip to Morocco and Italy. I need to do a lingering vacation next time, where I settle in to a place and relax a lot more. I’m glad you think my life is interesting and that you enjoy following my journeys. That makes me really happy. 🙂
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Yes we definitely need to take travel much slower now
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I love your Poetic Journeys. This one is riddled with sadnesses, some with the dimension of grief, some the dimension of nostalgia. You harvest memories so precisely. The two-line form works really well. Does it have a name? And another question: what were you doing in 2001? It seems to have inspired a lot of poetry.
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Hi Meg, I’m still traveling so haven’t had time to respond to comments. I’m so glad you liked my poetic journey back to my hometown. You’re right, my hometown holds nostalgia, grief and some amount of fear for me, especially if I let myself remember my childhood feelings. This is a poem of couplets; I’m not sure there is any other form to it. Also, in 2001, I took two semesters of poetry with a wonderful and encouraging teacher. It was fun to learn and experiment. 😊😊
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This is very powerful Cathy. It reeks of the sadness of your childhood and is beautifully written.
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Thank you so much, Jude. I’m glad you like it. 😊
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So many things, sad things, to wonder about. Intriguing.
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Thanks, yes, so many things. Of course I know them all, but it is the poet’s job to give people a feel without telling all. At least that’s one thing our professor taught us. 🙂 Thanks so much for reading, Anabel.
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