Homing Instinct
Monica Mody
Home—land
with thousand civilizations,
hundred thousand myths
of return.
Each of us left
a different home
behind. Even
the country we knew
by the same name.
Sadness is one lens:
things receding.
Migration—ancient
rite of passage.
Some of us become
new kinds of being.
Some get stuck
in liminal—still
making sense of
what we left behind,
who we are becoming,
& is it disloyal
(to homeland, comrades)
to change?
When ghosts of new place
see us as ghosts—exotic--
can we say, I am me &
my grandmothers—stories
push their heads close sometimes--
it is not aspiration for riches
that called me but
possibilities—new scripts
over old
equations of loyalty & failure.
We didn’t want to be pioneers.
Distinctiveness matters.
No one behind
or in front of us--
it is lonely & easy to vanish.
*
Home: left behind
has a pullback.
Some want to never
see it again, still it pulls.
Involuntary, ancestral
homeland.
Shall we seek
cords & cut them?
What about shapes
of integration
yet to arrive? Questions
we are still learning
to see? Beloveds
who stayed behind?
A new start in the new world--
ancestors endure
in us. Directing our feet
towards change:
self/world.
Will living away too long etiolate?
Will we commix, behold
parallax through eyes of other?
Bridging, we sometimes fall in gap.
Or find ourselves outside
arranged patterns--
knowing interruption,
knowing process.
Sunbirds
flying
behind sun--
damming fissures--
we came to shift
perspectives. Not just to see
bruises, but become
a kind of cure.
*
What is lost is still tender.
I wanted this poem
to be about gratitude:
what showed up was unfinished
business. Silent,
silenced stretches.
Slightest
shadows at home
entangle my feet.
What is here, I can
walk away from.
*
I came upon—not quality
of life--
what was not available
to home: distance.
Caesura from knowns.
We see the outside
of us as we travel.
Meaning and story
obtain with tearing apart
of perspective.
Shapes stitched
by all-seeing völva.
*
Thirteen years.
Casually, implicit
bias shows up.
Body grows
its own arcana of hurt.
Ordinary secret
drags me to anger.
Even this is ungrieved
sadness, I know.
In the rain, I let
myself get wet.
Some of us collude
with system.
Some seek to belong
controlling others’ narratives.
*
I don’t know if this poem will save
anyone. One day
driving back--
sighting fog’s cat feet--
I commit
(provisionally) to here.
*
We build sanctuaries
wherever we go.
Entering this world,
we emerge somewhere else.
Home. Home’s
synecdoche.
Home’s simulacra.
A world to hide in.
A world to range in.
Many worlds evermore
coexisting.
Place, a palimpsest
inscribed by immigrants.
*
My life here
coils as a plume
between peaks
& cliffs & shore.
Life carries on
in homeland.
I catch whiffs--
vividness--
leaves me gasping.
If life is not here
whole--
can I go home--
is there a place--
still—to claim?
On this caravan,
I am not alone.
Mothers & fathers, brothers,
sisters, aunts, & uncles--
grandmas & grandpas too--
cousins I know, those I’ve yet to meet--
kith whose songs imprint in tracks--
kin who carry taste of land’s
dust on their tongues.
For generations, we have moved.
Concept of home
dislocated into a straw frame,
a water puzzle.
Rooted to nothing more
than dubious
desire for a new life--
at times escape,
at times survivance.
We built isomorphic
traditions wherever we went.
Resemblances--
fabulations. There is no place
fully home. No one home
to go back to, no one story.
Some stories flowed
with us. Some flowed into earth
we crossed, becoming
part of its secret.
*
History is not always rupture.
We arrived with bags packed with grit--
conditions of arrival made possible
by a settler-colonial politics.
We came bearing stories
of the long road, the moving
waters. We came with old songs
of sun & moon like
mist on our lips.
In the circle we make—in our family
of stories with small & big
sorrows—can we know
this land’s
original people, instructions?
Can we braid
new lifeways of peace,
good relations? Take guidance
from land & creatures,
plants & stars & waters?
Even when belonging
looks precarious—out of reach—smoke
& mirrors—our tracks
have been shaped
by land’s intelligence--
blood-sweat-tears-prayers
have soaked in it.
We have become
part of memory. In earth’s
deep mantle, we are
coevolutionary already.
with thousand civilizations,
hundred thousand myths
of return.
Each of us left
a different home
behind. Even
the country we knew
by the same name.
Sadness is one lens:
things receding.
Migration—ancient
rite of passage.
Some of us become
new kinds of being.
Some get stuck
in liminal—still
making sense of
what we left behind,
who we are becoming,
& is it disloyal
(to homeland, comrades)
to change?
When ghosts of new place
see us as ghosts—exotic--
can we say, I am me &
my grandmothers—stories
push their heads close sometimes--
it is not aspiration for riches
that called me but
possibilities—new scripts
over old
equations of loyalty & failure.
We didn’t want to be pioneers.
Distinctiveness matters.
No one behind
or in front of us--
it is lonely & easy to vanish.
*
Home: left behind
has a pullback.
Some want to never
see it again, still it pulls.
Involuntary, ancestral
homeland.
Shall we seek
cords & cut them?
What about shapes
of integration
yet to arrive? Questions
we are still learning
to see? Beloveds
who stayed behind?
A new start in the new world--
ancestors endure
in us. Directing our feet
towards change:
self/world.
Will living away too long etiolate?
Will we commix, behold
parallax through eyes of other?
Bridging, we sometimes fall in gap.
Or find ourselves outside
arranged patterns--
knowing interruption,
knowing process.
Sunbirds
flying
behind sun--
damming fissures--
we came to shift
perspectives. Not just to see
bruises, but become
a kind of cure.
*
What is lost is still tender.
I wanted this poem
to be about gratitude:
what showed up was unfinished
business. Silent,
silenced stretches.
Slightest
shadows at home
entangle my feet.
What is here, I can
walk away from.
*
I came upon—not quality
of life--
what was not available
to home: distance.
Caesura from knowns.
We see the outside
of us as we travel.
Meaning and story
obtain with tearing apart
of perspective.
Shapes stitched
by all-seeing völva.
*
Thirteen years.
Casually, implicit
bias shows up.
Body grows
its own arcana of hurt.
Ordinary secret
drags me to anger.
Even this is ungrieved
sadness, I know.
In the rain, I let
myself get wet.
Some of us collude
with system.
Some seek to belong
controlling others’ narratives.
*
I don’t know if this poem will save
anyone. One day
driving back--
sighting fog’s cat feet--
I commit
(provisionally) to here.
*
We build sanctuaries
wherever we go.
Entering this world,
we emerge somewhere else.
Home. Home’s
synecdoche.
Home’s simulacra.
A world to hide in.
A world to range in.
Many worlds evermore
coexisting.
Place, a palimpsest
inscribed by immigrants.
*
My life here
coils as a plume
between peaks
& cliffs & shore.
Life carries on
in homeland.
I catch whiffs--
vividness--
leaves me gasping.
If life is not here
whole--
can I go home--
is there a place--
still—to claim?
On this caravan,
I am not alone.
Mothers & fathers, brothers,
sisters, aunts, & uncles--
grandmas & grandpas too--
cousins I know, those I’ve yet to meet--
kith whose songs imprint in tracks--
kin who carry taste of land’s
dust on their tongues.
For generations, we have moved.
Concept of home
dislocated into a straw frame,
a water puzzle.
Rooted to nothing more
than dubious
desire for a new life--
at times escape,
at times survivance.
We built isomorphic
traditions wherever we went.
Resemblances--
fabulations. There is no place
fully home. No one home
to go back to, no one story.
Some stories flowed
with us. Some flowed into earth
we crossed, becoming
part of its secret.
*
History is not always rupture.
We arrived with bags packed with grit--
conditions of arrival made possible
by a settler-colonial politics.
We came bearing stories
of the long road, the moving
waters. We came with old songs
of sun & moon like
mist on our lips.
In the circle we make—in our family
of stories with small & big
sorrows—can we know
this land’s
original people, instructions?
Can we braid
new lifeways of peace,
good relations? Take guidance
from land & creatures,
plants & stars & waters?
Even when belonging
looks precarious—out of reach—smoke
& mirrors—our tracks
have been shaped
by land’s intelligence--
blood-sweat-tears-prayers
have soaked in it.
We have become
part of memory. In earth’s
deep mantle, we are
coevolutionary already.
Monica Mody is the author of Kala Pani (1913 Press), the forthcoming Bright Parallel (Copper Coin), and three chapbooks including Ordinary Annals (above/ground press). Her writing appears in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She was born in Ranchi, India, and currently lives in the United States. Visit her at www.drmonicamody.com
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