These words are from my mother’s garden,

found in her softness, 

pulled from her strength, 

ways she taught me.

The Distance of Coming Home cannot be

measured in miles or in time, but only in 

the awakening of the heart, 

the fragile echoes of a small, familiar room.

The Distance of Coming Home is not a

straight line followed but a found

circling away from and towards,

a soaring and a plummeting,

the return to a single point.

Knowledge returning again and 

again to wonderment.

The Distance of Coming Home is an instinct,

a sense of place that waits crouched in

the mystery of morning’s golden light.

The loss felt long before

a loved one’s leaving.

For once you have hurried to arrive 

you are reminded that home

is not a landscape or a house 

But her body in my body, 

her laughter in my laughter, 

her choices in my choices

carried with me as I go.

These words are from my mother’s garden.
A POEM BY BABS CASE TO HER MOTHER

HEAR [take in]

SEE [perceive]

FEEL [be]

THINK [do]