Poetry Thursday: Coming Back

It's Thursday, and especially since these are the last weeks of Poetry Thursday, it seems all the more important that I find something to post here. I don't think I can write something from this week's prompt right away, but I can tweak the idea of this poem - coming back, returning - to sort-of fit with using a last line from another poem to begin a new one.

This is the only poem I wrote during my recent stay in California.

Orinda

I have come back
across an ocean and a continent,
to claim something -
and not, as I'd thought,
to abandon something.
Not to cast away
that remnant of our nineteen years,
but to claim these five,
and the Me that's in them.

To sit in sunlight
(Can I hear bells? Down the valley
they are ringing bells today!)
To sit in sunlight, quiet enough
to let the deer return,
to await evening and the horned owl's flight,
to say My heart is big as this place.
I have found a place big enough
for my heart.

I wrote it on what would have been my 24th wedding anniversary. I'd wanted to be away, away, away on that date, but when it came, my perspective had shifted. If you'd like to read a little about my travels, that's on my previous post HERE. If you want to see what else is on offer from Poetry Thursday participants, go HERE.

It's so good to be back.