Reflections on My Camino: A Series of Poems, By Joanne Lee

The Walk

Step by step we walk

Stop, sit down, and talk

Everyone at their own pace

I’ve learned that it’s not a race

As easy as the flight of a bird

Simplicity that’s never before occurred

With peace, with trees, with friends

In my heart I know it’ll never end

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Return to Home

A family history of broken ties and loose ends

Screaming and shouting, crying then sighing

I fled from the house that never felt like a home to me

But being outside repaired the damage once inside of me

Hurting became healing and troubling became treating

As I’m led to green pastures and beside still waters,

Like a child, I am restored in awe and wonder

All this talk of nurture versus nature, but in the end, what does it matter?

A lineage more deeply rooted than the blood in my veins

I call her Mother Nature, I call him Father Creator

They’re calling me back,

So I return to home

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An Unspoken Understanding

There was an unspoken understanding between the two of us

Between that little girl and me

She had her bright pink backpack on, full of number two pencils and notebooks for school

I had mine on, too, full of life’s necessities from clothes to shampoo

We couldn’t be headed off to more different places,

But there was an unspoken understanding between the two of us

 

We had the same straight black hair,

The odd ones out among the other choices: blond and brown

Same eyes,

Four dark shades in a sea of blue and green

We’re not like the others

So there was an unspoken understanding between the two of us

 

Her eyes,

Those eyes that resembled mine

For a moment so big, so startled, like she’d committed a crime

Stared so directly and straight into mine

 

Somehow seeing another that’s unlike the others made my solitary existence oh so clearer

This younger reflection of me exposed so much

About how really truly different I was

But more frighteningly, how dangerously blind to it I can be

For my differences, I believe, bring out the best in me

 

Camino Calls

unnamed-2The silky shimmer of sea as it calls along the shore

The freedom of forestry and farm I’ve never found before

The rhythmic beating as sole meets soil

The body-shaking snores that brings us so much toil

The crackling cobblestones that catch beneath my feet

The scraping saltiness of sweat meets water between my teeth

The pulpy pitter-patter of my fingers post-orange peeling

For some reason, these Camino calls just give me a fantastic feeling

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