Homebody - Mar 24 2021

 

Homebody

Mar 24 2021

I do not travel well.

Like a sensitive flower

that only flourishes

if its roots are not disturbed.

Or the nesting instinct of birds,

returning from a long migration

to the same tact of forest

same tree and branch

as every spring past.

“Homebody” sounds quaint,

an old woman, knitting needles clacking

rocking on the porch,

a man telling stories

we've all heard before.

So am I complacent

cleaving to my comfort zone?

Or sensible,

tending to my own plot of land

and leaving well enough alone?

A small life

but hardly tethered.

Because I live in my head

and travel as far I please,

back and forth in time

and with whomever I choose.

Or immerse myself in words,

and through the power of fiction

not only accompany my fellow travellers

but actually inhabit them,

taking fabulous journeys

that are unimaginably real.

And, like Odysseus, determined to return

no matter how far I stray,

home

the place where someone who loves me awaits

and I feel most content.

The best part of travelling,

when even the most restless must wonder

why ever they left.

We admire and envy travellers, just as we admire and envy the extroverted and gregarious. They seem to live big romantic lives. While homebodies must be fearful, lazy, or complacent; closed to new experience; or simply lacking in imagination.

But some of us are good at living in our heads. And reading can not only take us on great adventures far and wide, but also exercise our powers of empathy, inviting us in to other lives and world views.

“Home” is a perennial trope of literature, a universal theme. It's a powerful word that evokes strong emotion. As a homebody, I would question my parents about their penchant for travel, and my father invariably said that the best part was coming home again. So this poem is my attempt to rehabilitate the homebodies and introverts: the hot house orchids who prefer familiarity, over the robust dandelions who so easily take flight.

I'm ambivalent about the last line. (Which, I'm very much aware, is not a good line to be ambivalent about!) The inversion of ever and they sounds too “poetical” to me: kind of formal and archaic. I much prefer a conversational tone to any such inauthentic sounding voice. But for some reason, even though the number of syllables is the same, it reads so much better this way. So I went with prosody over style, and took a chance on sounding arch.