The Way Back
A syrupy rope of honeysuckle
hangs
indecently over my head
desire
without a hidden shadow
So naked a moment––then
ragged scraps of clouds
a leaf-streaked street
the sky knitted with stars
Not the end
but ending
The moon officiates . . .
How long it’s taken to find a way back
Between near and far––
inexplicabilis
inextricabilis––
it’s been a riddle
traversed in the dark
*
After the cave tunnel
the yawning unseen chasm
after the space
fracture cleared inside of me
the forbidden terrain the uncharted center
after the linear path
the circular pattern
after the grim, private ritual of death
the compass broken the needle static
after the rhythmic order of it all
after grief became a bird thieving the air
dropping its seed so that the tree would thrive
after all of this after seeing the crescent moon
formed by the bull’s horns before me
when another door opened
how willingly I walked through it
First published in the Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art and reprinted here by permission of the author.
Francine Sterle holds an MFA degree in poetry from Warren Wilson College and studied writing in a variety of settings, including Oxford University and the Spoleto Writers’ Workshop. She has received a dozen Pushcart Prize nominations; a Loft-McKnight Foundation Award; a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant; a Lake Superior Contemporary Writers Award; residencies at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Leighton Studios at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary; a Career Initiative Grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council; and a Fellowship Grant and a Career Opportunity Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her poems have been published widely in such literary journals as Poetry International, North American Review, Ploughshares, Nimrod, CutBank, Great River Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Atlanta Review and are anthologized in To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present, 33 Minnesota Poets, and The Cancer Poetry Project. Her poetry collections include The White Bridge (Poetry Harbor 1999), Every Bird is One Bird (Editor’s Prize, Tupelo Press 2001), Nude in Winter (Tupelo Press 2006), and What Thread? (David Martinson-Meadowhawk Prize, Red Dragonfly Press 2015)—which can be ordered here.
Poet’s Note
“The Way Back” is the culminating poem in What Thread?, a book about grief and loss which uses the classical labyrinth as its metaphoric center. The poem started as did every poem in this book with the assumption that what I was going through was not outside the reach of language and that by embracing my loss, I would eventually heal and regain my belief in the resilience of the human spirit. The poem is divided into two sections, the first of which is languidly paced in order to convey the laborious ending to this journey and is followed by a section which speeds up as the speaker nears the center of the labyrinth. My intention was to capture the varying landscapes of the psyche’s deep interior and to embrace this passage through the labyrinth as the crucible of self-transcendence and emotional resurrection.
I so appreciate both Francine’s explanatory note and Ms. Cohen’s analysis. I will return to What Thread? and appreciate it more fully because of this posting. Thank you!
Absolutely beautiful. I’ve been writing poetry for 50 years, this is exquisite writing. Thank you, Francine. OMG remarkable.
Love the structure of this poem! I also love the photograph and have noticed most of the images on this site come without any acknowledgement of the creator of the image. As a photographer, I am missing this information. I’m guessing you obtain the images via a stock service? Generally love the images selected as well, so someone is doing a great job making the choices. They enhance the writing. Hope you can find your way to giving credit to the maker of the images soon!