Poetry Friday: Travel

I'm leaving on a trip today (going to visit my daughter, hurray!), so I have been thinking about travel.  Here's Elizabeth Bishop on the subject.


Questions of Travel
Elizabeth Bishop

...

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.


Here's the rest of the poem.

I'm not anticipating wishing I had stayed at home, though I am expecting to get quite cold.  It's a little more usual to head south for Carnival than north, but I'm dreaming of a white Mardi Gras.

Miss Rumphius has today's roundup.