Travel Poems

Big Frank is on the road again - off to Japan. Travel always takes the traveler away, not just physically. This is probably the best part of travel. The familiar is left behind and the mind travels to new places. Here are two poems that capture that larger view of travel, one by Big Frank, and one by Dick Allen. More to come from the land of the sliding doors.
[Photo: Big Frank Dickinson]

A Traveler's Wish
By BIG FRANK DICKINSON

Let me take off clearly knowing nothing
Haunts me as I move outside of the usual;
Let those dear ones behind be as
Safe at home as I will be on the road.

Let the journey take me outside of me
To a place long-sought, accepted, and true;
Let this absence be a presence
Arriving with me and welcomed by all.

Let the return be a renewed reward
For having left the unwanted behind.
Let my presence be a fulfillment;
What's wanted welcomed home.


What You Have to Get Over
BY DICK ALLEN

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,
the blue one, especially.
Your first love rounding a corner,
that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,
you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance
before evening falls,
letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,
meaning “to proceed, to journey,
to travel from one place to another,”
as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,
the sun in the morning and the moon at night,
all those shadows of yourself you left behind
on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to
cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,
crawl over this ego or that eros,
then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning
“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen
or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,
you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot

to that bridge in the darkness
where the sentinels stand
guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,
warned of the likes of you.