The Wanderer

I am homesick, where is home?
Do roving people ever know
places where roots tap down?
I am homesick but where is home?
This house has furniture we’ve brought
from town to town
from other lives to this comfortable place
behind protective walls

I asked you last night
what would you do if anything you wanted
could be done. You said you’d travel
and see all the back roads
the hidden spots—I’d grant your wish
if I could:
We would be just young enough again
and brave enough to walk strange streets
in Samarkand, Calcutta,
or the valley where the Inca temples stand

I want to see the desert
and long to be
strong, to walk the hills
across the swinging bridges,
to stay a while in a kibbutz
or meditate beside a hut somewhere
north of Sappo. You want to see the Great Wall
and I have read of soldier statues
that guarded the Silk Road—I’ve a friend
in Kyoto, have always wanted to walk
across Iceland in summer as the poets did


What would it be like to go back
to Rupert, north to Kittimat
or Ketchican? There are a dozen islands
where I’ve been and want to go again
and a hundred others yet not seen

I want to hear
voices of women gathering
weaving together reeds
and talk
I want to touch the brown hands that made
this pottery jug and to learn to make a basket
to carry
it home

I know there are places not so very far
where neither television or radio
or even telephones can reach—all these
to be learned
but we
grown old
settle
for places
we can go
with cane
and pills
and carefully packed bags