What great journey are you planning?

The washer roars as its parts
complete their electo-mechanical orbits
another cycle of cleanliness
about to be completed

My neighbor's dogs bark at real postmen
and the ghosts of postwomen past
A toy archer is poised on
the crows' nest of a toy sailing ship

The Archer's bow is drawn
but he will never lose his arrow.
The boat's sails are unfurled,
it will never ride the waves
in the bath tub or the sea

Facing the toy boat,
my bronze lion of St Mark
purchased when my grandfather
visited Venice
at the end of WWI
It does not yearn to
return to the Serenissima
But I sure as hell do.

The keys of my computer click
an electronic abacus
that can still calculate the number a Spanish maravedi
it takes to by one Venetian Ducat
information that no will need
or want.

I am continually asked
what great journey am I planning next?
Istanbul or Chile I tell them
when the time and money are sufficient
which is like saying not now

But I am a 57-year-old fat guy
with a comb-over
I don't have many "not nows" left.
I will make it to Chile and to Istanbul.

The more important journey
is the one that beckons here
like a solitary cyclist
climbing a verdant Pyrenees mountain
the one that demands
that I go deep inside myself,
beyond terror, frustration, loneliness
and agony

I am here to
rip off the veils of reality
and try, try, try
to tell you what you don't know
you need to know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

What great journey are you planning? copyright July 15, 2011 by Jamie Jacks