NOSTALGIA
The slanting sun transported me
to my home from long ago
I recognized not the place
nor the familiar faces
What was will never again be –
time has made a stranger of me.
~~~~~
It’s all about SIJO over at the DVERSE Poets’ Pub. SIJO is traditional Korean poetry that has three lines, each line having 14-16 syllables. For more about the form and responses from talented writers, please visit the Pub. 🙂
Advertisements
the being transported away by the slanting sun is a powerful image…and the becoming a stranger…great work on the feel of loss
We moved around a lot when I was young; there are so many places that are a little familiar to me, but where I am a total stranger. Sometimes I wish it were different, but that’s a wish that can never be fulfilled, so I share your sense of dislocation.
i dunno…at times it seems history has a way of repeating…smiles…going back to those places we once lived…so much has changed….felt that in going home myself…nicely done on the form…smiles.
Dear Imelda..I think there is a lot of truth in your words…Sometimes, somehow, we become strangers to our own roots… Nostalgia is one of my favourite words…
what very deep thoughts…………I could see myself in the same situation having become a stranger to my own roots.
I love the melancholic nostalgia (or perhaps gratitude) summed up in your last line… but is it really true.. one day coming back to your roots.
We come back to the tiny house that in memory seemed so big, to the robust people now shriveled with age, and we do feel like strangers. You captured that aching nostalgia. Excellent piece, Imelda. Thanks for sharing your immense talent.
I know this feeling well – concisely captured!
The slanted light of the sun as a revelation is a very strong image… and that revelation, the disorientation, of being a stranger in a familiar place. You captured that well.
The opening line is terrific, the slanting sun transporting back to a home, where you are now a stranger ~ Great work on the form too ~
Thank you, Grace. 🙂
That’s so pretty. It danced as I read it out loud.
I can really relate to this poem, when I visit my childhood home in the US I feel like I look at it as an outsider and then I don’t quite feel that I am an authentic Finn even if I have lived here for 13 years. I feel like I have the citizenship to a place in the middle of the Atlantic that is built of characteristics from both places.
It was a weird feeling isn’t it? When I visited the Philippines last summer, I felt guilty that I did not feel too at home. I wanted to go back to the US. And then, suddenly, reading the comments, I realized that I do not completely belong here either. But this is where my family is – so this is home home for me now.
Beautifully done!
…time has made a stranger of me — ah, that will live in me for many times i guess… and what a sad sijo… i hope you can find your way back home here in Philippines… before the land forgets you, i hope not… smiles…
HI Kelvin. Thanks for dropping by. Umuwi kami last year, pagtapos nang 8 taon dito. Weird – pero kahit sabik ako umuwi, parang iba ang pakiramdam ko. Ang daming nabago. Siguro, kailangan ko lang ng matagal na bakasyon para at home uli ang pakiramdam ko. 🙂
The poem is beautiful, but that last line- “time has made a stranger of me” is so powerful.