“The Wanderer” by Jaeyoun Ryu

Happy Tuesday to All and Welcome to Poetics! Lisa here as your pub host, offerer of liquid refreshment, tasty snacks from the magic cupboard, and provider of today’s Poetics Prompt. Melissa has kindly and graciously agreed to open the bar today, but I’ll be in later after visiting with my son, daughter in-law, and 3-year-old granddaughter at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids.

Before getting into the prompt,

ATTENTION: dVerse LIVE will take place on Saturday, May 11th from 10 – 11 AM, New York time (EST). Watch for the OLN prompt on the dVerse page on Thursday, May 9^th for the link to join the Saturday event. You’re under no obligation to read, but if you do you can read any poem you wish, not just the one you linked up at OLN on Thursday. It’s a fun time of camaraderie and you get to see and talk with people from the poets pub live.

Now that housekeeping is in order…

Back in April of 2018, Gospel Isosceles, a.k.a. Amaya Engleking wrote a prompt about Holy Places. As I read through her essay, it pretty much says everything I would like to say about pilgrimage but that I could only hope to say as well. Six years have passed. Much has changed since 2018 but some things stay the same. We are the same, but different, which is a paradox but nonetheless true.

Today’s prompt isn’t just about pilgrimage. I looked at three words that feel like synonyms with each other; this word, wandering, and walkabout.

Pilgrimage is defined as:
1. A journey to a sacred place or shrine.
2. A long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance.
3. The journey of a pilgrim; a long journey; especially, a journey to a shrine or other sacred place. Fig., the journey of human life.

Wandering is defined as that which wanders, which is defined as:
1. To move about without a definite destination or purpose.
2. To go by an indirect route or at no set pace; amble.
3. To proceed in an irregular course; meander.

Walkabout is defined as:
1. A temporary return to traditional Aboriginal life, taken especially between periods of work or residence in modern society and usually involving a period of travel through the bush.
2. A walking trip.
3. A public stroll taken by an important person, such as a monarch, among a group of people for greeting and conversation.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to find a good poem on pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage
by Natasha Trethewey
(1966 –     ) Vicksburg, Mississippi
Here, the Mississippi carved
its mud-dark path, a graveyard
for skeletons of sunken riverboats.
Here, the river changed its course,
turning away from the city
as one turns, forgetting, from the past—
the abandoned bluffs, land sloping up
above the river’s bend—where now
the Yazoo fills the Mississippi’s empty bed.
Here, the dead stand up in stone, white
marble, on Confederate Avenue. I stand
on ground once hollowed by a web of caves;
they must have seemed like catacombs,
in 1863, to the woman sitting in her parlor,
candlelit, underground. I can see her
listening to shells explode, writing herself
into history, asking what is to become
of all the living things in this place?
This whole city is a grave. Every spring—
Pilgrimage—the living come to mingle
with the dead, brush against their cold shoulders
in the long hallways, listen all night
to their silence and indifference, relive
their dying on the green battlefield.
At the museum, we marvel at their clothes—
preserved under glass—so much smaller
than our own, as if those who wore them
were only children. We sleep in their beds,
the old mansions hunkered on the bluffs, draped
in flowers—funereal—a blur
of petals against the river’s gray.
The brochure in my room calls this
living history. The brass plate on the door reads
Prissy’s Room. A window frames
the river’s crawl toward the Gulf. In my dream,
the ghost of history lies down beside me,
rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm.

Finding one on wandering was a little easier.

The Song of Wandering Aengus
By William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Source: The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

Fire Dreaming, by Malcolm Maloney Jagamarra

Here is a short, but powerful poem on walkabout.

Walkabout
Copyright © Caren Krutsinger

Whimsically worry free
Always open to new possibilities as they arise
Looking toward the sun, even in the rain
Kangaroos leaping across your path, delighting you.
Always ready, hyper-vigilant of danger
Being true to your own glorious soul self
Outside in the wonderful keen of nature
United with the elements
Turning into yourself

We have come to the place where I lay out the challenge, should you choose to accept it.  This prompt will be as wide open as a field of dandelions with a bright blue sky overhead and snow-capped mountains in the distance. There are no form, length, or other restraints beyond the options about to be given.

Please choose one (or more) of the following and weave words into poetry:

1. Write a poem that involves pilgrimage, wandering, and/or walkabout. This can be literal, metaphorical, internal, external, a bucket list trip you would like to take someday, or one you have already taken. It could also travel to the dark side or shadow realms.

2. Take a line from one of the above poems and expand on it. Please include identifying info on the poem and poet on your post if you choose this one.

3. Write about a pilgrimage, wandering, or walkabout of someone you know, famous, infamous, or unknown is fine. The story, the experience that is shared is what matters.

4. Find or create an image and write an ekphrastic poem about pilgrimage, wandering, or walkabout to it.

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