Poem: Homeward Bound
Writing Lives,
workshop run by Dr Kelly Grovier
Albert Hans - assignment # 1 - Theme: Confessions
Homeward Bound
Autumn time is my time of year.
Life is slowly, but visibly changing.
Colour plays an important role in this.
Green shrinks and wrinkles,
Yellow turns into brown,
Shrivelling into death-bound nothingness.
This is not a bleak outlook on life to me.
Rather it is a home-coming,
The returning of an estranged soul
To its real inwardness,
Thereby establishing true identity.
It is as if storm-shaken, fortune plagued Odysseus,
Now purified and pacified,
Is returning into his safe haven of Ithaca.
The ravens, and with them a lot of other migrant birds,
Are on their way, too.
They instinctively know where to go.
Do I know where to go
In the face of all the others who know where to go?
- With spring and summer gone, life seems to retreat.
What a void all of a sudden? -
Do I have a home I can call my own?
Or do I have to be an eternal drifter,
Banned to be on a life-long move?
The way I go at this time of year is different,
Different in that it is inward bound.
The cosiness and shelter of my room,
Protecting me from the harsh weather and cold outside,
Is my nest, my home.
When the days get shorter, the light of the day
Diminished in its vigour,
It is the inner eye that wins strength,
Rising to an unknown intensity of self-awareness
In blissful self-content and happiness.