Lucid Travels

Once traveled,

not by map or monument,

but by the wingbeat of a kestrel threading thermals over rusted silos,

by the ant’s pilgrimage across cracked pavement toward a sugar crystal kingdom.

Once traveled,

through the belly of a storm,

where elk carve paths in snow like forgotten signatures of motion,

and rivers rewrite the land with every impatient bend.

Once traveled,

Peering through rattling smoky windows of a mountain bus,

not in protest, but in rhythm with the cicada’s drum,

with the fox’s midnight dash beneath a moon that never stays put.

Oh, the changes,

the rattles, the smoky windows,

how they shimmer like dragonfly wings in the hush before dusk.

Sweet is the breath of mountainous uphill movement,

where roots claw through shale like old men reaching for memory,

where branches whisper to the wind’s itinerant gospel.

Open spaces cry,

not for tourists,

but for the beetle tunneling through bark,

for the seed hitching a ride on a dog’s muddy paw,

for the mind excavating its own sedimentary truths.

There are paths, trails, roads, but also the flight of spores,

the migration of clouds,

the slow crawl of lichen across a forgotten stone.

And now…

in apartment rooms lined with books and quiet, the journey continues:

from chair to window,

from tea kettle to memory,

from one thought to the next.

A traveler still,

in the wild terrain of a well-cherished worn apartment,

where each corner is a continent of recollection,

and every breath a smiling passport to somewhere never quite left behind.