(after The Accidental Tourist)
You think there’s a traffic rule, if you see a sign
for an airport you have to pull in and get on a plane.
It isn’t on my way and I don’t have the fare.
I sit in my driveway and read your articles from Lima,
Belfast, Shanghai. Weather and lights. Unexpected place
settings and traffic patterns.
I picture your skill at packing a suitcase, adjusting
to time differences with pills and naps, cafe
conversations.
If you are to birth a new beginning you must be judicious
as to the articles you pack, only versatile, lightweight things.
Belongings you won’t miss if lost.
But even lost things chance upon new lives with random
finders. The umbrella, the apple core. A quarter. The picture
of her you pack.
A plane flies over my garden near the airport
as I bury what you discarded in the cover crop and leaf litter,
compost.
If you travel here, will you push away vines and mushrooms
to recognize what grows where you left me standing?
Will you profile it as a point of interest?
Sleep harbored.
Random finders can claim you, too.
First published in Thistle and Brilliant, Finishing Line Press.
Califragile founding editor Wren Tuatha’s poetry has appeared in The Cafe Review, Canary, Peacock Journal, Coachella Review, Baltimore Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Loch Raven Review, Clover, Lavender Review, and others. She’s pursuing her MFA at Goddard College. Her chapbooks, Thistle and Brilliant and the forthcoming Skeptical Goats, are from Finishing Line Press. Wren and her partner, author/activist C.T. Butler, herd rescue goats in the Camp Fire burn zone of California.
Painting, What We Leave Behind, by Jenn Zed.
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