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# A Return
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/a-return/
- Published: 2026-07-24T17:32:40.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-26T17:21:44.000Z
- Description: James B. Nicola
- Author: MW Editors
- Tags: Poetry, Arts

> To hear from, say, a friend you might have loved

> from whom you have not heard in quite a while

> and you know something of their *drang* and *sturm*

> so that you were beginning to worry,

> brings back the first play that you ever saw

> when the audience clapped for Peter Pan

> and brought the dying fairy Tinker Bell—

> onstage, a blinking flashlight—back to life.

> Not that the friendship’s like a fairy; but

> the flutter feels like the return of light.

### **James B. Nicola's nonfiction book** [***Playing the Audience*** ](https://www.cyberwit.net/authors/james-b-nicola?ref=merionwest.com)**won a *Choice Magazine* award. A graduate of Yale, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, and the Storyteller's People's Choice award.**