The Homing Heart by C. Ann Kodra

for my mother

Thank you for meeting me
at the door. You, shaking dishwater
from your hands, the flowered dress
skimming your young body. You, at the door
of my dream, smiling as I convince you to come outside,
to lean with me over the stone wall bordering land
that falls to a green mist where voices rise—tenor,
alto, soprano—singing the hillside to solemn
joy, open mouths hidden somewhere 
under a canvas of trees, there below
the white-trimmed cottage,
home.

My bones believe I’ve lived here before
and will live here again, the way in such dreams
we simply know. The land webs like a caul to enfold
me, soil and flora weaving into the spaces
among my cells, an infusion of rightness,
the afternoon light a meaningful 
nod to what must 
unfold.

I dream of many homes on many
nights, some close but not quite, others
all wrong. Each carries a message for the homing
heart. But this dream—the one where you’re at the door 
in daytime’s unexpected clarity, your mothering arms
reaching for me, mine still aching with the damp 
newness of love—this one takes me in and fits 
like skin, settles my heart on its natural hearth, 
lowers me softly to familiar earth without 
fear of ever again being lonely in my
aloneness. 





C. Ann Kodra’s poetry has appeared in Now & Then, RHINO, Saranac Review, Yemassee, and others. She is a contributing editor for New Millennium Writings and associate editor for MSI Press. She won the LMU George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry in 2016, and her first full poetry collection, Under an Adirondack Moon, was released by Iris Press in October 2017. 



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