Dec 11, 2018 Original Poetry
Coming Home
(At Sanders Theatre Today)
©December 10th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
In the dim recesses of the room,
Lights shine like forgotten memories
Surfacing among wood and metal.
Voices fill spaces and vaulted ceilings,
And the wood swallows up
All the songs, and hugs them close.
People cluster close, and their voices
Ring like vast gongs struck by lightning,
And the wood gathers them up.
My guitar is like this.
My guitar grew with my voice
Year after year, so that when
My voice was lost, I found it hiding there.
So it is with you when you are lost.
You’ll find yourself over and over again
In unexpected places. So, keep looking.
Forget compasses and stars.
Forget directions and maps.
Do this when you’re lost:
Find an old room you love, sit there,
Gather the air close, and sing in
All of your lost selves.
The wood remembers, the wood
Always remembers.
And all the molecules of sound
That cradled you from you birth
Will cluster close around you,
So that even when you carry your breath
From your birthplace to that foreign land,
You’ll always come home.
____________________________________________________