RETURN: Refusal of Return

We’re back! Once our Hero’s Poetry Journey yielded a peach-boon, we took a little break for the Crossroads poetry & painting show, but now, like Odysseus, we are making the long trek home. And if you think Return is boring, then you’ve never read The Odyssey.

Refusal of Return

We went There. Now it’s time to come Back Again.

But how do we do that? We’ve been changed. We know that when we finally get back home, it will look different because we are different. (Think of the first time you returned to your bedroom after going away to college.) This is the point in the journey when we dither about whether to return at all.

“The Morning,” by W.S. Merwin

Merwin’s poem is full of internal conflict, which is why I love it. The speaker loves The Morning, but questions whether he would love it this way if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if (nine times, if.) As I read this poem, I sense myself giving only one answer to each question:  no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Before my journey, I would not have loved the morning this way. I must go back. I can’t go back. I’m not the same person I was. And yet to refuse to return is to refuse myself, my road, my story. This poem helps me accept this thorn and walk on, where I need to go.

Be a Hero

To be a hero means more than fighting in a Homeric war. It’s Odysseus, returning home to Penelope and to Telemachus. The return journey may be dangerous. The end may not be glorious. But it is home.

https://soundcloud.com/megan-willome/the-morning-by-ws-merwin

 

What does the poem say about your hero’s journey?
Try to learn at least a little of it by heart.
If you like, email me at megan.willome@yahoo.com.

 

“Megan Willome has captured the essence of crow in this delightful children’s collection. Not only do the poems introduce the reader to the unusual habits and nature of this bird, but also different forms of poetry as well.”

—Michelle Ortega, poet and children’s speech pathologist