Travel Poems
The Art Of Drowning
by Billy Collins
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
......
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
......
platform light
by Rikske Kessner
"Platform Light"
Between the last stair
and the first step down,
they carry both airs —
hay‑sweet and brick‑warm
—in the same breath.
The train waits,
......
Home And Love
by Robert William Service
Just Home and Love! the words are small
Four little letters unto each;
And yet you will not find in all
The wide and gracious range of speech
Two more so tenderly complete:
When angels talk in Heaven above,
I'm sure they have no words more sweet
Than Home and Love.
Just Home and Love! it's hard to guess
......
Vista
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Buoyed up by the syntheses of the past,
idyllic murals of green hills open paths
to a healing truth.
What say the brown camels of Casablanca
to assassins nursing festered wounds of
new Karma?
Yesteryears recline on the shoulders of
a greying age, chanting songs to a
......
platform light
by Rikske Kessner
"Platform Light"
Between the last stair
and the first step down,
they carry both airs —
hay‑sweet and brick‑warm
—in the same breath.
The train waits,
......
backward-facing carriage
by Rikske Kessner
"Backward Carriage, Early Draft of a Life"
The train shudders
through a corridor of fields,
windows flicking past barns, pylons,
a rusted ute half‑sunk in grass.
I sit face against the direction of travel,
watching the day unspool behind me,
......
Culture Shock
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
Lila Pussycat lived with Mistress Irene, when moon dust decorated night;
And days had nostagia of yesterday, like mulberry sun, warm and bright.
In their cozy cottage at the edge of town, they lived quietly, day to day;
Like stillness hour of apricot noon, before currant butterflies waft away.
Laughter was often echoing in rooms, for Lila sometimes did cute tricks;
As when briefest rainbow disappears, after colorful, evanescent conflicts.
Fat fruit hung on trees of famished fall, in forthright days of late summer;
......
An Arctic Story
by Dr. Robert Ippaso
At first light trudging through the Arctic Snow,
Is it for thrill or just a Facebook photo show?
As the Arctic wind buffets our flushed face,
The long-awaited walk soon becomes a shambles of a race.
Hands morph to splintered wood, eyebrows deftly freeze,
And yet the brochure promised we’d do this trek with ease.
Soldier on, embrace the frigid grind,
Pray aloud that inner fortitude to find,
Not a sound outside our laden breath,
Every move made with fractured hapless stealth.
......
Sweet Sorrow
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
Bonnie Brown was in love with Charles, like black pearl clings to night,
So young and engaged to be married, like myriad stars, shining white.
They were active professionals, dwelling in a charming, bustling town;
As warbling charms orange noon, after pink mist clears, with no sound.
They had dreams of future and a family, like purple nights of fantasy;
And they were already making plans, like butterflies flitting frantically.
Fellowship of friends made fabulous Fridays, when they met after hours,
......
