☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ Like those Nicean barks of yore That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. E.A. Poe
Such transports as true poetry provides
In raptures of the soul, and lyric rides,
May carry one beyond the lofty heights
In chariots of sun on drunken nights.
Whether true odyssey or shorter trip,
Homeric craft or humbler sort of ship,
The poet’s chosen stowaway rides free;
The ticket paid for literarily.
And afterward, the traveler comes home
Enriched by distant sights and worlds unknown.
PROMPT #2: write a poem about a specific place — a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances, types of trees or flowers, color of the shirts on people there.
By the trash-strewn brook of sewage midst plastic bags snagged on bushes below the rusting bridge of Calle Nueva tropic flowers bloom in rotten muck.
Past the bridge three blocks up on Calle Comercio Schoolchildren come and go dark blue uniforms buttoned down in the Latin sun.
Pastel guayaberas and frilled aprons pass. . . street vendors cry out their wares, baskets of abundance head-borne while car-horns blare cacophony.
There, in pharmaceutical shade, the pedestrian is welcomed into Farmacia Carcache —