"The Wayfarer."
One must turn thought to the displacement of a voyage,
cultivate the mind to undertake travel's long discomfort
and insecurity, such as tripping down stairs
as you look up, and adapt the parlance of malediction
and misunderstanding for the rare day
that all goes well to consider the Way of the Wayfarer.
As you step onto an overlook, touch
the cold rust of guardrail, and lift eyes
to the migration of whales spouting
in the distant, iron-gray sea, you
find Luck's on the road with you this March,
the sheer pluck of choosing to tarry where others find only
wind.
When asked, were you born happy?
You say, no, I was not.
Rather and persistently melancholic.
Yet the treasure of your get-up-and-go,
your grit in the not-giving-up, always tempers the story you
tell for a lark, maybe to be a bit magical, who knows?
The one with fairies at the bottom
of the garden and the song that broke you
up every time it's so silly--
that you could never finish.