Thoughts While Walking Poem by Rachel Todd Wetzsteon

I hate the travel logs that tell you
more about the pain than the place,
yet here I am again, narrating

the same old story to myself
time after time. The papers circling
in an alley, watched by a hunchback,

mimic my plans and their preventer;
when an old man treats the drycleaner
to a lengthy sermon on spotting,

I collect it; bloated clouds spell
messages that people stopped hearing
long ago, and as for the hag

who runs at me, arms open, mouth bleeding?
She's my future, my terrible double.
Always I head out, hot for details,

and always the details start revolving
around brave ingénues who put their
innocent hands in wicked bonfires.

I could never go for ten minutes
without seeing fissures as faces,
and I confess a hopeless weakness

for the types who come back from travels,
gather their fans around and tell them
stories of order or of wonder:

seashores and meadows sometimes get so
muffled and many-voiced that tourists
storm in and do their talking for them—

It's addictive, magical, vital.
But I've observed how, more and more, these
promising outings are becoming

meta-walks and mechanized phrases:
"When I ventured into the outback,
how it blared back echoes of me,

my bright dreams and tragic uniqueness."
Meanwhile forces of good and evil
squirm and flourish under the carpet,

mocking the visionary moment's
sweeping appeal. I'll go on going
out for scenes of horror and pleasure,

but I'll start pursuing clues leading
to the return of that enormous,
fertile ground between shouting and silence.