Poetry Prompt #16 - Journeys

It's been said that we travel to lose ourselves, and that we travel to find ourselves. Proust wrote, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." What does "travel" mean to you in terms of wonder, discovery, and self-revelation? Has a journey in your life given you "new eyes?"

Write a poem in which you travel: the journey may be real, imagined, emotional, or spiritual. You may take an "overland trip" through description, attention to details, and sensory perceptions, or you may lead readers through your journey's surface terrain into the emotional, spiritual, or metaphorical landscape at its center.

Before you start writing, be sure to read the examples below.

LITTLE GIDDING  (excerpt) 

BY T. S. ELIOT 

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

(Click Here to Read the Whole Poem: Little Gidding)

TRAVEL

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY 

The railroad track is miles away, 

    And the day is loud with voices speaking, 

Yet there isn't a train goes by all day 

    But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by, 

    Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming, 

But I see its cinders red on the sky, 

    And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make, 

    And better friends I'll not be knowing; 

Yet there isn't a train I'd rather take, 

    No matter where it's going. 

IN ENGLAND THE FORMIDABLE MS X TAKES DIRECTIONS 

FROM SOME GUY NAMED Z 

BY RENÉE  ASHLEY

First it’s liftoff and she’s wearing her history like a bib. Sleep won’t bend her knee, she’s                                 bent with the lack. So she’s going with the man and the wind blows through. She won’t beat like a wren’s wing, like that wing but she’ll flap and he knows it. Bird on the breeze over the sheep- field. Take these bitters and run to the pub. No. Not what he said he said here is the fence now play outside. He said here is the gate now play outside. He said go outside. Yes. And, yes, has a kink in her hip, her brain’s on hold. She’s a mild case of still alive. (Still has the mother’s eyes, and the father’s eyes. The gun & a bucket for the blood. She climbs their rope ladders. A wind blows through.) She’s eating cold fish. She’s eating cold fish and she’s watching three sheep, three bend at the knee. When she flaps those sheep turn and turn their sheepy eyes. Behind barbed wire the sheep turn. She’s taking direction from some guy named Z. She’s taking that direction: turns left at the bus stop, dustbin, callbox. Turns right at the White Hart, brown dog, stoat. Lorry, biscuit, hedgepig, hare turning.  Acknowledgment: Blackbird (Spring 2007, Vol. 6, No. 1) http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v6n1/poetry/ashley_r/england.htm Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Questions of Travel" By Elizabeth Bishop 

Click Here: Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop

"The Journey" By James Wright

Click Here: The Journey By James Wright

"The Journey" By Mary Oliver

Click Here: The Journey By Mary Oliver

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

Click Here: The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost

Songs for the Open Road is an anthology of over 80 poems on the theme of travel and adventure by 50 poets, including Whitman, Byron, Shelley, Masefield, Hughes, Dickinson, Yeats, Eliot, Hopkins, and many others. 

Click title to order:  Songs for the Open Road