The Despedida

Leave-taking

By Sr Mae Janet MacDonell, OLM
Summer 2000

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This poem is dedicated to memories of 65 Clarendon Avenue and all Our Lady’s Missionaries in mission everywhere.

I leave you now
here in this place
where for a short time
I have been ‘at home’

Remind myself that home is everywhere
and pack within the folds of things both old and new
another store of memories
And wonder who
will share the stories of my journeys on my return

That question goes both ways in comings and goings
in endings and beginnings

Time etched in faces
in beloved places
in welcomes and goodbyes
in receivings and in givings
that mark my heart with sacred scars

This Love of contradictions that would have me stay
yet now, impels my going

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