Poetry of Travel, Poetry of Place

Writing helps us to process what we're learning and open ourselves to insight.

Reading aloud moves words through our bodies by way of our breath, vocal cords, ears, so to deepen a physical experience.

I wince. In reflex, my left hand shields my eyes

against wing snap, against the urge to stop

for a flock on the highway, muttering recollections…

parents launched by a car that filled the rearview

mirror. The news of their departure from this life

soon feathered from summer radios on the half hour.

This tinted windshield raises invisible eddies.

A flight of pigeons spreads skyward with red feet.

Again birds will cluster on roadsides, settle in eaves.

Were I a latter-day Pandora unlocking and releasing

Misfortunes' rush from a sprung box of myth, I'd note

they turn to feed on us, not on insect, fruit, seed.

Hope beguiles us yet again to open lids. What’s inside

may be a gift—another heart to hold up to all ills—

or a crush greater than any other, the cries as bodies

shatter safety glass, and, after....You’ve heard

Hope’s whisper, its lift releasing secrets.

Here escape's a blur upward, and surrounds us

as we speak. Wing-fanned, we race against what is

unavoidable, like wind, or shadow, or the next tick

of the blood’s clock, as though luck itself had wings.

first published in The Examined Life Journal