A Ticket Home
The field lies fallow
Words are buried
like seed, I pray
Dreams are frayed
at their edges
This poem is late
like a loved one
passed on
A treasured habit
changing its form
I hold it like a memory
close to my chest
A lost locket
with a missing chain
I cross my fingers
and follow a thought
as if it was a nightingale
deep in a forest
It’s a ticket home
where my brothers are gone
and my sister waits
for a sign she can hear
I want to revisit a familiar path
But they say you can’t go back
I’m lovelorn and homesick
when I stop being a poet
When there’s no place to go
and no time to fill
I’m left to let go
of my own self-importance
to live in quiet presence
and meet the moment
The birds are my angels now
The sky is my comfort
with its slow-moving
ceaseless unfolding
where wholeness is manifest
and time is sunrise and sunset
One day my body
will fall like a star
I’ll burn like a poem on paper
I’ll radiate ember
and scatter like ash
Someone will make a wish
________Colleen Redman dVerse Poets Pub / Poets and Storytellers United
October 23rd, 2025 3:15 pm
“a lost locket with a missing chain”….somehow I am stuck on this image. Quite powerful.
October 23rd, 2025 3:25 pm
I love the phrase ‘dreams are frayed at their edges’ and the lines:
‘I cross my fingers
and follow a thought
as if it was a nightingale
deep in a forest’.
I think we would all feel lovelorn and homesick when we stop being poets
October 23rd, 2025 3:32 pm
I think the title tied so well into the images of the poem… and home can be so much
October 23rd, 2025 3:57 pm
The closing verse & esp the closing line of the closing verse nails the piece and totally blows me away. Great stuff, CR. Thanks
October 23rd, 2025 4:18 pm
Love this especially; “The sky is my comfort
with its slow-moving ceaseless unfolding.
October 23rd, 2025 5:11 pm
Great imagery, Colleen.
October 23rd, 2025 6:31 pm
In the center of it all:
“I’m lovelorn and homesick
when I stop being a poet”
Keep on a-poeming, Colleen.
October 23rd, 2025 9:04 pm
“One day my body
will fall like a star
I’ll burn like a poem on paper
I’ll radiate ember
and scatter like ash
Someone will make a wish”
Stellar writing, Colleen!
October 24th, 2025 12:23 am
I feel the intensity of that homesickness (and can relate, being far now from the place where I was born and grew up). I love the turn in mood / reflections that begins in verse four, and above all the positivity and beauty of the last two verses, and a sense of entering the vastness.
October 24th, 2025 12:37 am
I wish that it is not soon.
“A lost locket with a missing chain” – i like that.
October 24th, 2025 2:09 am
Beautiful poem I love “and follow a thought
as if it was a nightingale deep in a forest” and the last two stanzas
October 24th, 2025 4:20 am
“Someone will make a wish” – I hope so.
Nicely written 👏
October 24th, 2025 5:50 am
“I’m lovelorn and homesick
when I stop being a poet”
Thank goodness you haven’t stopped, Colleen, and many will make a wish when your time comes, I am sure…
October 24th, 2025 10:30 am
Nicely done, Colleen!
October 24th, 2025 8:01 pm
One day my body
will fall like a star
I’ll burn like a poem on paper
I’ll radiate ember
and scatter like ash
Someone will make a wish
Love this, the imagery and the ember/paper and ash/wish rhymes……lovely poem…JIM
October 25th, 2025 12:23 pm
“Someone make a wish.” That is beautiful in its context.
You can’t go back, no you can’t. It is never the same and how disappointing that is. Painful.
October 27th, 2025 3:19 am
And it will be granted.
October 27th, 2025 11:10 am
Letting go of self importance … living in quiet presence … meeting the moment ~ ahhh yes. Gorgeous writing, Colleen.
October 28th, 2025 2:33 pm
nice poem and I believe you saved the best for the last
November 3rd, 2025 3:44 pm
“This poem is late
like a loved one
passed on”
💔
“I’m lovelorn and homesick
when I stop being a poet”
I know that feeling. The last stanza is perfection.
November 3rd, 2025 6:39 pm
Thank you one and all.