RETURN: Return with Elixir
“Peace,” by Sara Teasdale
Return with Elixir
An elixir is curative. It turns metal into gold or grants long life or provides healing balm. But once we’ve gone through the whole hero’s journey to get the thing, we might see it differntly than we had when it was just a thing to be gotten.
The elixir is to be shared with others. This cure is not for us alone but for the community. Maybe even the world.
“Peace” 
I have such mixed feelings about choosing “Peace” as my elixir poem. On one hand, the secret sauce we’re all longing for is right there in the title: peace. Whoppee! And yet Teasdale is a poet who died by suicide. I cannot separate her life-story from her wonder-full words.
Yet again, this is the second poem I learned by heart. I learned it on a fall vacation to New Mexico and Colorado — states I’d visited umpteen times, but never in their autumn glory. I made up body motions to go with the poem, basically a series of cat-cow poses that shift with the rhymes. Reciting the poem in this way literally bequeaths the elixir of peace.
Night by night, stop by stop, it lodged deep within me.
Be a Hero
Peace is not easily gained, but it is the best we can hope for at the end of our hero’s journey. We may have lost people along the way. We have learned things we didn’t exactly want to know. We are, ourselves, changed. And so changed, we can change our little corner of the world with our elixir.
We are the pool of blue.
We are the pool of gold.
Even if our hopes are stuck, heaven-high
We now hold stars.
If there’s a single poem from our hero’s poetry journey that I’d encourage your to memorize, it’s this one. No one writes beauty like Sara Teasdale.
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.
I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”
—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro
