Goodbye, New Friend
Sadly,
it's time
to whisper
goodbye,
Adios.
We just met
mere moments,
three days.
Now,
like the peppery
pulsing
of Market Square,
your fire
flickers inside me
fiercely
yet I must return
to contracts,
schedules,
and alarm clocks
Who knows whether
my feet will cross
that love-locked bridge,
the Riverwalk,
or La Villita again?
But now,
your spark
burns
gently in
my soul.
Make Poetry a New Friend in Your Scrapbook
Quick take: Photos show where you went. Poems help you remember what it felt like.
I don’t write many travel poems. Honestly, I should.
Like most travelers, I return home with a phone full of photos. A few years later, I can usually remember the landmarks, but many of the smaller moments have faded.
That’s what struck me while writing this poem. Poems can become part of a scrapbook. Not polished literary masterpieces. Just snapshots made of words.
A photograph might capture Market Square. A poem can capture the peppery pulsing of the place, the feeling of knowing it’s almost time to leave, or the melancholy of returning to contracts, schedules, and alarm clocks.
The more I think about it, the more I suspect I’ve been overlooking something.
When we travel, we collect photographs, postcards, ticket stubs, and souvenirs. Why not collect a few poems as well?
A Few Things I Want To Remember From Future Trips:
- what surprised me
- what made me laugh
- what tasted different
- what I wish I could revisit
- what I felt when it was time to leave
Anyone can take a picture of the Riverwalk. Only I can record what I felt standing there. Years from now, the photos will remind me where I was. Maybe the poems will remind me who I was when I was there.