Homeland

 

Here the land is so wild

commandos train on it.

Even the village drunks

speak a language older

 

than English, a music

the Saxons never trusted.

My grandfather’s watch sings

an altered time in my pocket,

 

a counting as old as the mountain

I clamber to crawl up.

Something in my blood catches

on the twisting corners.

 

Slowly, I know how

this flinty trail ends.

My name seems familiar

to the stones, the gulls.

 

Claim they’ve known me for years.

My hands reach for the wind

as though it were a harp.

I remember this fever

 

has a name: hiraeth,        

a gentle cancer that feeds

in the heart’s four rooms.

I descend. A clutch of voices

 

swim up from Capel Seion

seeking, as for centuries,

the shifting doors of heaven.

I know the words. I sing.

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Under Story

 

My father kept moving:

hands, arms, legs.

Cooked, planted, tended.

Drafted.WWII Horse Cavalry.

He stalked Nazis across Italian mountains

and inside German villages.

Marched miles into combat.

His motto: protect your feet.

 

Wear good socks and sturdy shoes

Well-fitting. Low rise. Practical.

Smooth leather with saddle soap

and mink oil. Use polish.

The scent of his shoe brush

sits in my cupboard like

a soldier in reserve.

 

My mother weathered her own trauma.

Shopped to ease her orphan emptiness.

Nicknacks. Themed towels with sailboats.

Tablecloths to hide her secrets. Water damaged

cherry wood dining table.

Many moves later, her collection

drained and dispersed.          

 

One thing I kept. Her

colorful narrow striped socks.

Slipped them on to walk the dog.

Thin and insubstantial

they slid down into boots.

Bunched up at the bottom

exposing bare ankles to freezing winds.

Anger rode up my legs and out my mouth.

Startled the dog with harsh words not meant for her.

 

Home again, I strip off her socks and toss them.

Now the caretaking is over, grief rides                       

a different cavalry.

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Catherine Reid Day’s story-based coaching method is published in the Journal of Individual Psychology. She’s adapting her method into a workbook titled The Urgency of Who You Are. Her poems appeared in Willows Wept Review, Highly Sensitive Refuge, and the Park Bugle. Poems arrive for her while walking the dog or gardening.

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