from: Thoughts on Coming Back and Going Back

Do choose well your timing.

We made no mistake to promise a better future,
at least, no mistake, to set such hope.
We did mistake to blame the past,
to forget
that past is not by blame undone.
It comes back in anger to ambush:
      the promise not realized
      blemish not obscured
      war not ended
      life, in death not replaced
      design, in imitation perverted
      adventure paused
      experiment not perfected
      success not humbly accepted

from: 
Thoughts on Coming Back and Going Back

Bob Komives

His year ended in September,
headed back out on an airplane:
      through suspended time
      to apprentice languages
      and still new countries

She found herself among the regulars,
sipped her beer,
wrote and watched,
listened to their strange words:
      wishing to be of them
      pleased to be outside
      looking in
      taking notes
      the audience alone
      drama and comedy
      back and forth
      a rush
      a calm
      floors swept
      regular customers
      back for their usual
      out and gone forever

Tomorrow,
fly off to your new life in the Americas,
      the lands of hope and prosperity
      where you have lived fifty years.
Harvest the welcomes and rejections.
Start anew.

You were back three days
before the familiar knock
came back through your conscience wall:
      what will you do?
      how will you earn?
      when will you answer?
      and in answering
      (just to answer)
      what will you by default decide?
What will we be next year?
How long will we be?

If she writes poetry for a third year
has she come back a poet?
If he finishes his family's spoken history
has he returned an historian?

You help family and friend
if you come back with a better label:
      for yourself, a better label.
Coming back or going back,
what we call you
is what we believe of you
in the little time we have to think of you.

I come back to what is familiar:
      to skies
      bluer than I can recall
      to arms and smiles
      missed more than I knew
      to smells
      I remember only when I walk into them

He came back because this is home,
      the place he comes back to.
He came back here
because he had gone back there:
      as a visitor returning into history
      to the rugged works
      of people seven hundred years older
      to the strange language
      each time less strange
      to greetings by more friends than remembered
      to towns
      more like home than expected
      at home
      yet away from home
      in a place that home will never be

You have come from one hundred places
and have gone back to fifty.
In thirty you felt things familiar
that somehow welcomed you.
In twenty-nine 
the welcoming expectations are few,
and the mystery is great.
In one the expectations are many;
the mystery is thought to be gone.

As visitor,
you were at home in simple familiarity.
Here, in familiar complexity,
you are near-native.

Homes away from home:
      freedom and wonder
      at worst, dissipation

Home, itself, is a cave,
if on a great flat plain,
if in a sunlit treetop:
      comfortable and enveloping
      a base and a discipline
      at worst, confinement.

"Coming and going")
      (you might say)
"are just a matter of timing."
Timed poorly,
you may bounce 
      between confinement and dissipation.
Timed well,
you can float 
      between discipline and freedom.

In coming back and going back,
do choose well your timing.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 1995 ::from: Thoughts on Coming Back and Going Back :: ,9524