IN POETRY
The Soul Longs for Home
by Jerome Gagnon
Jerome Gagnon lives in Northern California where he’s worked as a teacher, tutor, and freelance journalist. He studied with Robert Creeley and Kay Boyle at San Francisco State University, receiving an M.A. in English/Creative Writing. His work has recently appeared in Dodging the Rain, Spiritus, Archaeopteryx, Crab Creek Review, Poet Lore, several anthologies, and Kathleen Quinlan’s How Higher Education Feels: Commentaries on Poems that Illuminate Emotions in Learning and Teaching. He is also the author of a chapbook, Spell of the Ordinary (Finishing Line Press, 2018). www.jeromegagnonblog.wordpress.com
Jerome Gagnon lives in Northern California where he’s worked as a teacher, tutor, and freelance journalist. He studied with Robert Creeley and Kay Boyle at San Francisco State University, receiving an M.A. in English/Creative Writing. His work has recently appeared in Dodging the Rain, Spiritus, Archaeopteryx, Crab Creek Review, Poet Lore, several anthologies, and Kathleen Quinlan’s How Higher Education Feels: Commentaries on Poems that Illuminate Emotions in Learning and Teaching. He is also the author of a chapbook, Spell of the Ordinary (Finishing Line Press, 2018). www.jeromegagnonblog.wordpress.com
1.
There may come a time, if it hasn’t already,
when your heart cracks open,
and no god, no prayer can enter there.
You walk around with this exposed wound at your center.
When you see your face reflected in the window
of a Chinese market—the stoop of your neck,
the way your mouth is painted on like a thin gash--
something deep inside you wants to cry out
about the ache of lost love,
of skinny ducks hanging from hooks on a wire.
Details will vary.
2.
If I say that loss is a pilgrimage
and we don’t travel this road alone,
would that be so unthinkable?
3.
One day, you notice the street sweeper
making neat piles of leaves on the sidewalk
is smiling to himself.
Crusty loaves of bread jump out from their wrappers.
The resonance of bees amazes you.
The ground beneath your feet rises up, and the sky
above your head sends down its airy messages of welcome
to everything—just everything--
but you, in particular.
You go on, not
because.
There may come a time, if it hasn’t already,
when your heart cracks open,
and no god, no prayer can enter there.
You walk around with this exposed wound at your center.
When you see your face reflected in the window
of a Chinese market—the stoop of your neck,
the way your mouth is painted on like a thin gash--
something deep inside you wants to cry out
about the ache of lost love,
of skinny ducks hanging from hooks on a wire.
Details will vary.
2.
If I say that loss is a pilgrimage
and we don’t travel this road alone,
would that be so unthinkable?
3.
One day, you notice the street sweeper
making neat piles of leaves on the sidewalk
is smiling to himself.
Crusty loaves of bread jump out from their wrappers.
The resonance of bees amazes you.
The ground beneath your feet rises up, and the sky
above your head sends down its airy messages of welcome
to everything—just everything--
but you, in particular.
You go on, not
because.