A Year-long Journey for the Price of a One-Way Ticket

I’m packing a suitcase

with clean socks and new neckties

with photographs of people I never met

with a miniature version of the world that can fit onto a teaspoon

with a teaspoon

with one bag filled with many other bags

with several old, empty, rusted cans

with a moaning harmonica which I never did learn how to play

with all the money and humility I’ve managed to save up over the years

and with a letter that I have read over twelve million times

I’ll empty it out along the way,

and bring it back filled

with an entirely different collection of who-knows-what.

 

I’m catching a bus,

at the intersection of Main Street and the street I grew up on,

at 2:37 a.m. when I can’t decide if it’s still today or if it’s tomorrow yet,

a bus with a white-bearded driver who whistles “When the Saints Go Marching In,”

a bus with long dark windows that will look out, but refuse to look in,

a bus with cold metal poles to lean your shoulders against,

a bus which stops suddenly and unexpectedly like a sneeze,

a bus which passes over bridges and under bridges and between bridges,

a bus which rumbles like my stomach,

and is filled with weary, broken people who share warm knowing glances and fears of funerals.

I’ll ride it for several hours which will seem like forty days,

and arrive in an enormous city

where I shall spend twenty-six minutes eating breakfast.

 

I’m taking a year:

five months to track down a wild North American jackalope,

twenty-four hours to chase the sun around the globe and never give it a chance to set,

three days to visit the tomb of a person who was famous for having died,

one week to try authentic Mongolian cuisine,

ninety minutes to see what lies beneath a wishing well,

a fortnight to grow a beard longer than I am tall

thirty seconds to stand on the first step of a stairway before I move up to the next,

a winter to rediscover the things which I once hid in hopes that they wouldn’t be rediscovered,

and the remaining time to look out over the world that I have simultaneously loved and hated.

I’ll make the most out of it that I can,

and count out each moment

on a chart tattooed to the inside of my chest.

 

I’m leaving a message

to reassure you that I arrived safely,

to welcome you to join me if you decide to go for a walk,

to warn you to remain behind,

to say that I look forward to once again taking your hand in mine,

to apologize, you know what for,

to thank you for smiling at me even though we never spoke much, it meant more than you know

to promise that I shall never forget,

to tell you about all the things I felt, but could never figure out what they meant,

and to give you this poem that I wrote for you and for me.

I’ll place it here on the three-legged table in the hall,

and hope you find it,

before you find out that I have gone.