Poem: "Home Souring Home"
This poem came out of the March 5, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from chordatesrock and DW user Adeliej. It has been sponsored by janetmiles. This poem belongs to the series Fledgling Grace.
Home Souring Home
The wings spoke the truth,
and nothing but the truth,
but never the whole truth.
They pulled out one thread of ancestry
from what was, perhaps, an entire tapestry;
or one religion, one affinity, one anything;
rarely more than one, only a few
people represented in their complexity.
Most people didn't like complexity
and found the simple wings pleasing.
They followed the clues
back to ancestral homelands,
took up old languages like forgotten tools,
tried each other on for size.
"Go where your wings take you,"
people said, and they did,
but it didn't always work out.
Sometimes you got there
and hated the place your ancestors had loved --
or had they loved it so much as that?
They'd left, after all.
Sometimes you got there
and hated your neighbors.
Maybe you didn't have anything in common
or maybe you did, and just rubbed each other
the wrong way for no discernible reason.
Sometimes you got there
and turned right around and went home
only to discover sweet turned to sour,
only to learn home had changed
out from under you while you were gone,
given over to new people, new wings.
There were people who looked at all the ruckus
over the Fledging, and shrugged their sudden wings,
and just went back to mowing the lawn
exactly as they had always done.