Not So Much Questions of Travel

Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home? —Elizabeth Bishop

I don’t suppose my questions are so much

questions of travel, per se, as they are

questions of how best to employ one’s mind,

how best to use one’s legs, how to manage

this anxious relationship—the often

dismissed bond between the fixing to go

and the up and going. Speaking only

for myself, I am generally pleased

by both the fixing and the going. Plus,

I do enjoy the actual transit

to and fro. One finds in the very midst

of all travel so much to taste and see.

Each flight, road trip, and voyage during which

the mind by turns rushes ahead, by turns

hunkers and bides, is really something. Yes,

something of a roiling sea, the mind flits

and seizes, spins, reaches far as it might

ahead, which, of course, will not preclude its

intermittent reaching back as well. Still,

the best moments really have to be those

when the mind suddenly quiets, the legs

forego further ambulation, and one’s

eyes more clearly fix upon the persons,

places, and things comprising what might could

be one’s immediate topos. Ever

fogged by blithe, mediating agency

of one or another sort, one is hard-

pressed to gather much sans skew, or much that’s

true and free of obfuscation. My own

questions pretty much revolve around what

might make the most efficacious balance

of my late—if lately somewhat waning—

hoard of psychic and somatic energies.

Should I stay? Or go? Would my stretching out

my worn body upon the Aegean

prove more sweetly satisfying than my

staying put in the imagination’s

inland dwelling? Well, afloat and soaking,

I’d still have a chance to think things over,

find time and passable space to puzzle

all manner of pairing and repairing,

in warm and brilliant collaboration.