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Homing

That things should happen
twice, and place
share the burden of remembering. Home,
the first cliché. We say it
with aspiration as the breath
opens to a room of its own (a bed,
a closet for the secret self), then closes
on a hum. Home. Which is the sound of time
breaking a little, growing slow and thick as the soup
that simmers on the stove. Abide,
abode. Pass me that plate,
the one with the hand-painted habitant
sitting on a log. My parents bought it
on their honeymoon – see? Dated on the bottom,
1937. He has paused to smoke his pipe, the tree
half-cut and leaning. Is he thinking where
to build his cabin or just idling his mind
while his pipe smoke mingles with the air? A bird,
or something (it is hard to tell), hangs overhead.
Now it’s covered by your grilled cheese sandwich.

Part two, my interpretation. The leaning tree
points home, then
past home into real estate and its innumerable
Kodak moments: kittens, uncles,
barbecues. And behind those scenes the heavy
footstep on the stair, the face locked
in the window frame, things that happen
and keep happening, reruns
of family romance. And the smudged bird? I say it’s
a Yellow Warbler who has flown
from winter habitat in South America to nest here
in the clearing. If we catch it, band it,
let it go a thousand miles away it will be back
within a week. How?
Home is what we know
and know we know, the intricately
feathered nest. Homing
asks the question.

-Don McKay, 2004

My life has a funny way of finding its way to me, and I tend to just roll with the punches. Less than a week ago I received some news, and in the past six days I've made a decision that in some ways felt already decided. What I mean to say is that a question I've now posed twice (via poem) in this here illustrious blog has been answered.

The little ouzel bird has spoken: I'm going back to the university. Although perhaps I shan't call it back, because this fall I'll be bound for someplace entirely new. I hear it's cold in Saskatchewan.