What I Will Remember from My Travels
Brandon Cook
What I most remember of our trip to Paris was not the Mona Lisa or her sly smile
(Though I could see why she has beguiled five centuries of minds)
But rather, I will remember the warehouses, near the airport, along the Seine
They strained in their daily labors, and the laborers outside them smoked dark and milds, to put their minds at ease, beneath a timid sky, as if the day cannot find its way or smile,
But sighs
As if it is stuck in tedium, so far from revelry, next to the great city
An unseeing eye in a world of light
And while I took from Rome, above all, the Coliseum, the city’s ancient throne
I will also remember a small restaurant near the Tiber, unpeopled by tourists,
Where we had a mediocre meal, of pasta and cheap wine, and then walked beneath evergreens, which lined
the quiet streets,
The simplicity of it all somehow perfecting our time, and satisfying our tired minds
In Jerusalem, I will remember Rehovot, that neighborhood so far from the Western Wall
Where people went to dance class and ate in small cafes and laughed and cried
As if the entire crossroads of history must give way to our daily dramas, and our crimes
Brooding in the street
Laughing at the spectacle of human desire, so full of fire
Neatly hidden and pushed down, endlessly longing,
Like the streams of so many rivers, and of centuries
Like the cool, quiet hours in the desert
Before the morning breaks in heartless song
Because no matter what greatness is happening
We forget the sum of things,
Which is mainly a women watering flowers, nursing hope for spring, at her own feet
And a child filling hours with wonder, sitting on her stomach, coloring
And a man smoking on the sidewalk, tending to such strong desire that, were it a storm,
It would tear a ship apart
As could shake the heart of the earth
As could shake all earthly monuments
And the foundations of the world
More real, somehow, all of it, and the art of surviving and striving forward, with heart,
Than the most sublime art
Hung on walls for us to gawk and smile at and cool or souls as we stare at it
For we have it all within our hearts already
We only recognize her smile and the height of the Coliseum and the mourning of the Western wall, and the daily walks in quiet neighborhoods
Because we have them all
Down deep inside us
We have them all, crying out, like mother earth in birth
Down deep inside the dirt of us