The Poetry Pub’s day 12 prompt for the November Poem a Day Challenge is “nostalgia.” I can’t even see that word anymore without thinking of C.S. Lewis’ sermon, “The Weight of Glory, in which he writes,

In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. — C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

My poem just riffs (rips?) off his words. You can listen to me read the poem via the player below.

Once long ago, I can’t exactly say when
I remember living in a far away land
Where blue flowers bloomed in spring,
Where birds sang songs
That I can just remember
But can’t seem to sing.

You probably think me a fool.
The more I speak, the more I feel
That I’m confessing,
Feel that I am somehow undressing,
Or living that dream where one’s surprised
That they’re at school and somehow arrived
Undressed.

I blush to admit it, but
There’s something secret
In the heart of me
That wants to be known,
Wants Someone to know
And see.

(Shake it off, I say).
But this ache will not go away,
These arrows pierce and pain
My heart with a Glory Unknowable
Someone I want to meet, yet
Someone I fear...so, No.
The want is Inconsolable.
If I open to drink, I could die
While to be in reach and denied
Would be death just the same.

"It’s nothing but 'a mood," I say.
Still, I would rather have the ache
Than not.
I would rather hold the sweetness
Of those moments when the vision of
The ember-leafed tree
Holds me,
Or watching children I love
Play with one another,
Full of wonder,
Ignorant of the world
And me
And those things I see.

© Randall Edwards 2023