Travel

April 9, 2023

ANCESTRY

It shouldn’t be so easy to forget
where your ancestors came from, why
they left their homes, traveled to
a new place where they might not be welcomed
but took the chance for a better future or just
to avoid the horrors of where they were.
It is a part of your DNA, yours were
the” other” then, but yours came and made
a new life, as your grandparents
told you repeatedly until you covered
your ears, the story an earworm
you only wanted to avoid again.
Now you sit in your pleasant home, with
food on your table, and decry those
who appear at the border as your
ancestors once did, seeking escape
from terror or poverty, so it seems
your forgetting is complete,
your ancestors are consigned to history.

December 1, 2020

ARE YOU CRAZY?

The birds look at us as though we had two heads. They cannot, they say, comprehend how we can stand to live in boxes, to travel in metal containers, to be stuck forever to the ground. They say that food should be picked then eaten instantly, not packaged and half thrown away. They say they cannot see how we are supposedly more evolved than they, for they have the sort of freedom about which we only talk endlessly. But most of all, and saddest of all, we know they pity us as we pity ourselves.

September 2, 2020

CENTER SEAT

My friends have often wondered aloud
why I claim to be most creative when
I am stuck on an airplane for hours.

I have told them that the solitude,
the lack of It is an interesting quirk
of the internet, that birth
and death are disconnected.

Seeking out those born today
I found a long list, the dinosaur
among which is Judy Collins.

That I still remember seeing her
reminds me at once a sense of my youth
and my ever progressing age.

But seek out those who died
on this day, and you hear the strains
of the Slavonic Dance in E minor

or the Sabre Dance from Gayane
but Popes Pius V and Marcellus II
suggest neither of them matter,

Heathens both, they claim, which
brings a deep laugh from Cleaver
and Livingstone, both of who

deny the other, and each says
that only he truly found the black
panther, and I’m thankful to be alive.to distract me,
which includes any airline approved movie,

that allows my creative self to emerge, to
express itself fully without reservation,
a status that being earthbound denies.

Many laugh, uncertain of how creativity
expresses itself, but certain, they
assure me, that my efforts have not

gone unnoticed, that my time spent,
but most importantly my results so well
reflect the surroundings of their creation.

August 21, 2020

CITIZEN OF . . .

There was a time that now
seems so very long ago, when I
would freely admit, sometimes claim
to be American, if not acknowledging
my time in the Air Force as well.

Those days are gone, as is the place
I knew, now morphed into somewhere
much the same, and entirely unrecognizable,
and I am American by proximity, knowing
my welcome has been worn out for me elsewhere.

It need not, ought not, have been this way,
political seas have long ebbed and flowed,
but I, we, knew we could remain afloat
on our constitutional raft, built to ride out
whatever storms might blow our way.

We know, or have an abiding hope that this,
that he and his band of marauders, will pass
into history, a dark cloud finally pushed aside,
but despite the shortness of his tenure,
I can only nervously wonder what will remain.

March 27, 2020

ABRIDGED STORY

On our first visit to Prague
it was almost hard to imagine that this bridge
was built to ferry people and traffic across the River.
Now it is jammed with tourists and those
for whom tourists are a ubiquitous market,
and anyone needing to expeditiously cross
the cranky water that every now and again must
indulge the bridge, or use the less interesting bridges adjacent.
There is a veneer of age about this ancient
the statuary darkened by time and weather
replaced when the waters get truly petulant
and carry off statues they deem an affront.
Motion on the bridge is slow and can tend
toward gridlock, to the joy of those
selling art and tchotchkes, and tchotchke arts
that won’t be truly regretted by the buyer until
it is hung on the wall next to the waterglobe
miniatures of St. Matthias church and
the parliament buildings Budapest.

March 7, 2020

THE LIST

I am compiling a list, ever so slowly,
of places I still want to visit,
and you may be surprised to find
that Paris, London and Madrid
are nowhere to be found.

It isn’t that they lack beauty, charm
and countless things to see and do,
it is simply that they have been usurped
by other places commanding my attention.

I’ve been to Zeeb and Pawpaw, if
driving by on the interstate counts,
and I am certain in Michigan it must,
but I do need a good laugh at times,
and Yeehaw Junction just might
satisfy my need perfectly, and, failing
that, there is always Surprise and Carefree,
and if I want to lose myself for a while
Nowhere is waiting patiently for me,
although I have heard it’s a bit hard to find.

No, what I really need is Happy Corner,
and from there, as I age I know I must
eventually, end up in Truth or Consequences.

January 21, 2020

IMPRESSIONS

I have no reason to venture to Tahiti
for Gaugin took me there years ago,
and again on a visit to Chicago and one
to New York, or was it Cleveland, it hardly
matters, for I know that the Tahiti of my
experience no longer exists, touristed
to death, itself at constant risk of drowning.

I did have reason to go to Arles, and there
searched far and wide for the sky
that Vincent promised, or the flowers,
but the few stars visible through
the lights and pollution of the city were
pale imitations of the brilliant lights I know
were there aj century ago.

Now I sit in my yard and watch
the comings and goings of
a thousand birds who deserve
to be painted and not captured merely
in pixels, for memory, human and
electronic, fades with time, while
art if not artists can be immortal.

October 4, 2019

BETWEEN

He says “the shortest distance
between any two points is a straight line.”
She says, “you will miss seeing
of the amazing sights if you
follow that inane rule, and by the way
Einstein made it quite clear
space is curved, and the line
you think straight is not at all,
so why not follow a more varied curve
and see what there is to see
along the way. It might surprise you.”
He says, “I have to follow the road
and the interstates are the most direct routes.”
She says, “there are an infinite number
ways to get from point A to B.”
She wants to try several of them
and if he doesn’t like it, well
there is always the back seat.

August 14, 2019

FULL OF IT

He is worried, he says
that we will be leaving on a full moon.
I remind him that he leaves
in two weeks, that this morning’s
half-moon will be gone then
replaced by its now absent other half.
He says it should be full if it’s half now
and half a month passes.
His statements seem logical enough
But the moon and stars have their own logic
and don’t care what we think,
that’s why I say, Luna never turns
her back on us so she’s always half unseen,
and she and the stars are willing to remind us
they were all gods and goddesses once
and could go back to that with very little warning.