The idea is knowing that I can go
somewhere, and I am making the first
pattern of steps, no one has ever traveled before.
However I do it, I will be an original, I hope, in my specific moves,
through a crowded city, walking around in widening circles,
then down an alley, up a stairway, out a back exit,
returning to a main thoroughfare, on to where the sidewalk ends,
then off along a country road, rounding that tree,
taking a photo looking up through its leaves,
putting my arms around that tree, feel the chi,
then take no beaten trail, but trek through tall grass,
down to a pristine shore, touch and taste the ocean
here where, who knows, I may be sipping a water molecule
that once was a part of me, some many years ago,
drawing pictures with a soaked stick of driftwood that’s floated
here a hundred or a thousand miles, then hiking over a dune,
and down into a black bamboo forest, where I hear bars of a song
in the moving leaves only I will ever hear at this moment,
alone . . .
With each step forward, from the time I leave me house,
to the time I return, key in the lock and stepping through the doorway,
I like to know, that no one has taken the exact same journey I have,
and I write the draft of my story constantly along the way,
maybe only in my mind, finish it only there, where a rough draft is fine,
shelve it in order that I can retrieve it, read the my only memory,
when I need it, so I can walk again the walk that only I have walked,
tell myself again that I alone have done just this, never even share the story
with a friend, keep it whole, sacred, a private screening to run through my mind,
when I sit in the middle of a noisy, lonely crowd.
* * * * *
Today’s word is
travel
Use it in a piece of writing, and then post that piece as a comment below. I would love to read it : )
Lanning Lee 