Lands across the sea are calling me
with ancient melodies known to poets
and singers and dancers and players
of mandolins, pipes, flutes, and castanets.
Windmill-dotted mesetas, boggy moors,
breezy and sunny coastlands, these cradles
of small civilizations that struggled for identity,
for autonomy, for a chance, these must
nurture little tucked-away corners
whose names echo deep places in me.
Their music composes my workday's soundtrack.
Their history beckons my perusal, infinitely
more seductive than misplaced punctuation.
Like artisans before me, I must put down
in clumsy lines and rhymes the kinship
that is sounded in my mind and soul and heart.
I am a traveler without pack or mule or ship
but with an insatiable brain, a guidebook, and pen and paper
or a computer and keyboard, I travel and chronicle
the mysterious pathways of the twists and turns
of culture that reveal God's creativity, if we but look.