Single? Travel and Get Lucky: the Sunday travel poem
I was fighting off cockroaches on this Indian train — just part of the “musk of the earth”.
Not all who travel solo are single. But, truly, I wish all who are single would try solo travel.
Single people are frequently the butt of jokes and jibes about “getting lucky”. But this term takes on a whole new meaning through solo travel. As it does in this poem. Here, one gets lucky when he or she returns from travel “trailing snake scales, wing fragments and the musk of Earth and moon”.
I love it!
Not everyone understands the need to travel and fewer still understand the need of the single person to head out on their own solo. It is the first three stanzas that really speak to me on this issue. By traveling solo I can connect more deeply with a place and its people than when I am distracted by a companion. I get close to the ground, to the “musk of the earth”. I am more affected by travel. Its remnants linger with me.
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Our poet, Geneen Marie Haugen is a writer, wilderness wanderer and scholar. She contributed to Going Alone: Women’s Adventures in the Wild. She is also a guide at the Animas Valley Institute where she will lead three more trips this year.
The Return
Some day, if you are lucky,
you’ll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces
of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns from your eyes.
Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
their own possibility, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless,
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them. We warned you,
they might declare, there is nothing else,
no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet, they tremble, mute,
afraid you’ve returned without sweet
elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
a fluent dance or holy language
to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where
no one crosses without weeping
for the terrible beauty of galaxies
and granite and bone. They tremble,
hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings
will redeem them, yet they fear
your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished
mouth, they — like you — must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
