I love that travel can allow us to see our own homes with fresh eyes. And I have the same experience after gathering with loved ones – a chance to return to myself with added clarity, a renewal born of remembrance.

Dear ones, time flies away.

We are so often scattered and scared.

May we recognize the stranger who knows us by heart.

May we feast on our lives.

Love After Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

This poem can be found in The Poetry of Derek Walcott or in many online settings.