Looking forward to seeing a lot of nice local poet-friends tonight. The following is an old poem I’ll be reading tonight.
The Irrelevance of Itinerary
There were no more maps
just bite-marks and dry lips
that bled on their own.
Hair that stuck to skin
and smells that lingered on
like good music.
There were no more frontiers,
the proper guides left far behind.
Previous roads meant nothing now
and the mirror of time
was broken once and for all.
There were no more names
in this territory and everything
had stopped making sense.
There was no telling if they
would ever arrive or even stop.
Much of the their time was spent
lost in the country of desire.
Destinations changed daily.
A touch, a glance or single word
could shift forever the travel plans
of all these crazy tourist-lovers.
………………………………………………….
This poem won first place in a love poetry contest for Winnipeg`s Zygote magazine in the `90s. It had the honour to be read at a makeshift cafe one fall evening under the dome of the great entrance hall of Winnipeg`s Union Station (below), a beautiful structure built by the same architect who built Grand Central Station. I was always think of that context in conjunction with the process of this favorite.
