ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER

I must have watched that segment from Eat, Pray, Love a dozen times
you know the one that takes place in Italy?
I haven't yet been to Rome, but I have savored other cities
and trodden other cobblestones in Paris, Brussels, Galway, London

have baguette, will travel: under the arm or in a basket
oh, the cheese and bread and chocolate in Paris
a city summed up in three food groups

you've never had a Belgian waffle until you've been tempted
to succumb to the smell of the street waffles in Flanders

the winding roads of Ireland
with their sodden pavement and wet sheep
require warming with ales and making stout with fish and chips

I could eat scones with butter and clotted cream and lemon curd
with Earl Grey Tea until I sunk to the bottom of the Thames
and my eyes would never tire of the golden glow inside St. Paul's

and even if I were wealthy enough
to see all the cities of the world before I die
there will come a time when my traveling days will cease
when I am too old or too sick to tour
but who says my Passport will ever be too full
or my wanderlust interrupted?

no matter where I make my home
I will always be homesick for those places that I have loved
and in my mind I will go back
and the Passport of my heart will be stamped
again and again and again

1999

I lay on the ground
atop a cascade of autumn leaves
discarded by the trees as if for my benefit

I was fully grown and greened
hardly thinking I would be
as the oak that had lost her colors
even less the rotten trunk
with no leaves left to drop

Is that what it means to be young?
Must a youth think naught
of age and mortality
or worse, fear it?

Is the only promise found
in yards and yards of slack
or are there still knots to cling to
in the last foot of rope?