This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt asks where we have traveled, even if it is just down the street.
It’s been a while since I’ve had morning coffee over an Ada Limón book, so this morning, that’s where I’m traveling. I’m using Instructions on Not Giving Up as a mentor poem for my poem about traveling today. As they say of travel, “Birds have wings; humans have books.”
Instructions on Traveling the World
more than the elusive green and Seine of Paris, a city
of concrete and stone, more than the Thames rushing by
The Tower, more than the Spree and its bridge of love locks, it’s
the early morning steam rising off the quaint rural ponds
that really gets to me. When darkness clocks out
and the world is still, you can see the wispy white nightgowns –
those sheer ones that seem to float – hanging onto the
threads of the night waters. Flowing, fading, an ethereal mist
takes shape, vanishing into all assurance of another place
and promise of return. Fine, then, I’ll take it, my soul seems
to say, embracing faith that this is how the cycle works
across the globe, transcending Heaven and Earth as I grasp the truth
of it, finally: it’s not about where my body goes, but where my
mind and soul go that really matter in this life.
I’ll take it all.
Common Threads 