Directions [by Joseph Stroud]

Anyone who knows me knows that I have an affinity for moleskine journals.  Sparked my junior year of college, I have since started a mini collection of unfinished yet severely tarnished journals.  In the spirit of this trip, I bought a new one: unscathed; unmarked that is until I went on a search for the perfect words to grace the first page.  Rifling through "Good Poems," a so-called textbook from my poetry class, I knew Garrison Keillor would come through for me with this compilation.  And he did, of course.  In the section entitled Trips was this poem by Joseph Stroud:

Directions

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world

Take a plane to London.

From King's Cross take the direct train to York.

Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon,

then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd,

a narrow road with high stone walls on each side,

and soon you'll be on the moors.  There's a pub,

The Drovers, where it's warm inside, a tiny room,

You can stand at the counter and drink a pint of Old Peculiar.

For a moment everything will be all right.  You're back

at a beginning.  Soon you'll walk into Yorkshire Country,

into dells, farms, into blackberry and cloud country.

You'll walk for hours.  You'll walk the freshness

back into your life.  This is true.  You can do this.

Even now, sitting at your desk, worrying, troubled,

you can gaze across Middlesmoor to Ramsgill,

the copses, the abbeys of slanting light, the fells,

you can look down on that figure walking toward Scar House,

cheeks flushed, curfews rising in front of him, walking,

making his way, working his life, step by step, into grace.

peace to you,

liz