How many times have I poured heavy cream from a squat wooden bowl
onto a fiery batch of raspberries --- the glory of this medieval
Swiss village of Gruyeres? How many times have I trod its cobblestone
streets, smooth stones scuffing my shoes, stones that fit like
molars in a jaw bone-- polished by millions of soles?

How many times have I spied a ***** blur the road, like an
atom split in fusion? Only once, today: an orange-red body,
windswept ears, toothsome snout, black-tipped tail, torpedo straight,
a rudder perfectly fixed on one course only: Elsewhere.

Repetition is the maker of travel, the reinstantiation of
the essence of our experience, each piece yearning to grow
into a medley with others. Only an on-key tune can capture
the elan vital of belonging nowhere but in memory. All travel
begs for repetition, for affirmation, for like turns to like.

Zen practices the presence of the now, instantaneous,
paradoxical, vanishing as it appears. Travel practices the Zen
of Zen, deconstructing the present into a precious piece of the past.
Travel recedes to remember tomorrow as yesterday’s promise.

I am back there, not here. I reminisce, reconstruct, relish
the essence of travel as I taste the heavy cream, the tartness
of raspberries, and the afternoon amazement as a ***** crossed
my path -- just as Merwin describes in The *****, his masterpiece.

I look back. His experience gains on me and quickly melds into my own.
His spiritual exercises inspire me. My repetition of them and his incorrigible wanderlust reconstitutes again and again his own timeless poetic reward.