Tag Archives: vacation

Tourist

Visiting a place is not being there,
it is only sight and sound –
drawn curtains
a polished candelabra.

You see in lists and itineraries,
perspective narrowed
to what such places concede freely,
satisfying curious wanderers;
souls ravaged like refugees,
without the time or patience to settle
down.

A distant home that feels like asylum,
pending and uncertain.
All virtues lost,
yet to be found.

You can feel authenticity crisp in
the air.

You can’t grasp it,
though it is there –
it is there,
left only with pictures awash in venom;
that resolve like troubled thoughts,
dying after a sober night’s sleep.

Visiting a place is not being there.

Being there requires sacrifice.
It requires the hint of escape on the horizon,
silhouetting all the shapes visitors ignore;
seeing those shadows and loving them,
for how they embrace the light.

The Return

We try so hard to find the words
to remember the fading dream,
catch falling water with our hands;
to capture the best memories.

There is no jar that can hold them,
but go on and puncture the lid.
No box so large as to entomb,
but go on and wrap what you can.

Their fragile nature makes them great
while also the cause for heartbreak;
for the truth that they make us feel
cannot reconcile what is real.

Though we are obliged to live lies,
and the moments we truly lived
will fade into obscurity;
take solace in what gifts they give.

It is in those spaces we find
the time to appreciate love
and enjoy one another’s truths
that have eluded us since youth.

Unfettered by any demands
we become what we’re meant to be,
but like sifting desert sands;
that power is far too costly.

Still, I want all those memories;
the haunting phantasm of those dreams,
the moist lips of a desperate drink;
let photographers fill in those blanks.