Two Songs of the Open Road

What is this urge to travel? What is this beckoning that some feel so strongly and yet is entirely foreign to me?

I am pairing two different poets here. A chardonnay with brie; a ruby port with a dark chocolate. But which is which?

           I

in the stillness
of a bare canyon
I'm a scarecrow
with a cigarette
tied to its face

I'm an incident
in a tumbleweed's travels
on a backroad
a dustcloud in a lizard's eye

***

at the edge of a desolate plain
lies a graveyard
neat as a postage stamp
mailing this bleak postcard
to the afterlife

and every highway
wears on its shoulder
a wandering dog
struck dead


IV

As I stepped out the front door of the hotel, a dust devil
big enough to swallow a car came spinning across the
parking lot, lifting its collection of dirt, papers, dead weeds,
30 feet in the air, until it collided with the carport roof
to die in a shower of debris, except for a small feather,
which wafted toward me and was about to alight on my
raised hand when the final gasp of the whirlwind snatched
it away to go dancing gaily over the top of the building
and I hurried around the hotel to claim the splinter of
grace that was meant for me. But the moment had passed.

Roger Parish
from Lines Written Near Marguerite Street
2006 Red Dragonfly Press

__________________________________________

from "Song of the Open Road"

Afoot and lighthearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth, I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querrulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

                                                    5

From this hour I ordained myself loosed from limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

Walt Whitman
from  Leaves of Grass
1855


Roger is a dear and long time friend of mine. He is also a poet, though, being a persnickety old cuss, rarely releases a line. Whitman, on the other hand, well, you couldn't shut the man up. Yet the desire to see other vistas, to be part of other landscapes, infuses both. Roger has spent months and months wandering the trackless wastes of the American southwest and barely produced 200 words.
Whitman, I get the feeling, had his entire poem, of 224 lines in his head before he'd even reached the corner of his block!

Are you a traveler? What does it mean to you?

Anyhow....enjoy