Journeying Fall 2020 Issue 17

Red Wolf Journal Fall 2020 Journeying Irene Toh, Editor 1 Copyright © 2020 by Red Wolf Editions Contributors retain copyright on their own poems. Cover artwork: John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891 No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews giving due credit to the authors. 2 Journeying Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home? Or could Pascal have been not entirely right about just sitting quietly in one's room? Continent, city, country, society: the choice is never wide and never free. And here, or there... No. Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be? —Elizabeth Bishop Ah…the lure of seeing the world. A cornucopia of sights, sounds and tastes for one’s senses awaits the traveler. Beyond the sensory experiences does travel change the traveler? What is its romance? What are the experiences that translate to pleasure, or discomfort? There’re many Journey stories. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy travels to the magical land of Oz, before returning to Kansas after a magical adventure; in Journey to the West, a Buddhist monk travelled to the western regions of Central Asia and India to obtain the sutras. Accompanied by his three colorful disciples, he encountered many demons who covetted his flesh in exchange for immortality; in the end the monk and his disciples succeeded in their quest; in The Odyssey, Odysseus had taken 10 years to get home to Ithaca, surviving the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops, the witch goddess Circe, the Sirens, the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis and finally a shipwreck. These epic journeys were filled with trials and tribulations. They are about transformations, a test of character and the creation of identity. Then there’re the road trips. One of the most definitive is Jack Kerouac’s On The Road — a lyrical, trippy stream of consciousness. There’s Thelma & Louise, a feminist fantasy movie bar none. In the Gilmore Girls (I binge watched it on Netflix recently!) there’s a part of the storyline where Lorelai Gilmore decided to hit the Pacific Crest Trail after reading Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. Just like the protagonist in the book, she had hit a rough spot in her personal life and decided to go on the trip (like plenty of other women too apparently) and it was there that she received a moment of clarity. She knew what she had to do, which was to call her mother to mend the mother-daughter rift and to marry her long-time partner, Luke. The best road trips are about growth, illumination and awakening. Often to sort out one’s self a physical journey is taken. Seamus Heaney’s poem, “The Peninsula”, is on point. When you have nothing more to say, Just drive For a day all round the peninsula. The sky is tall as over a runway, The land without marks, so you will not arrive 3 But pass through, though always skirting landfall. At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill, The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable And you're in the dark again. Now recall The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log, That rock where breakers shredded into rags, The leggy birds stilted on their own legs, Islands riding themselves out into the fog, And drive back home, still with nothing to say Except that now you will uncode all landscapes By this: things founded clean on their own shapes, Water and ground in their extremity. Wherever you go, you can’t help but be inside yourself, and what rules the inside but your heart. In Matthew Dickman’s poem, “The Mysterious Human Heart”, the landscape the protagonist describes is of a produce market in New York, yet the external world is always subject to the internal workings of one’s heart. On Monday morning I will walk down to the market with my heart inside me, mysterious something I will never get to hold in my hands, something I will never understand. Not like the apricots and potatoes, the albino asparagus wrapped in damp paper towels, their tips like the spark of a match, the bunch of daisies, almost more a weed than a flower, the clementine, the sausage links and chicken hung in the window, facing the street where my heart is president of the Association for Random Desire, a series of complex yeas and nays, where I pick up the plantain, the ginger root, the sprig of cilantro that makes me human, makes me a citizen with the right to vote, to bear arms, the right to assemble and fall in love. In this issue of poetry, the journeying can be a kind of wandering. But need not be. The journeying is really inside yourself. And it is all about feelings and emotions. Why? Because ultimately it’s about your soul’s Journey. All these Journeys are part of that one. All these journeys are experiences that are designed to make you feel and when you come out of a journey, in whatever form, you are changed in some way. You are moving towards the goal of becoming yourself. Just like Odysseus, you are trying to get home, to feel more and more your destiny, to come to peace with it. Life itself is a series of transformations. Outside the world seems still the same, but inside you’re not the same. 4 Your poems about Journeying would be about any moment to moment experiences I imagine. Anything really, as long as there’s an emotional current, as long as from point A to point B there has been a transformation within. On their way home from Troy, Odysseus and his men were captured by the Cyclops and he had told Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, his name was “Nobody” and in that way had escaped his captor. In truth in making his epic Journey, by the time he got home the Journey had made him who he was – Odysseus. The homecoming completed his story. Your Journey is your story of becoming who you are. As the poet Li-Young Lee had once said, “We’re all versions of Odysseus trying to get home.” It takes time and effort. It takes courage and will-power. It takes everything you’ve got to overcome whatever had come up to delay and prevent you from getting home. You, meaning the protagonist in your poem. First you need to go on a Journey. The Journey is some sort of quest, a getting to know yourself quest. How else will you know yourself? Your Journey is into the unknown. Having Journeyed, you will then know, and tell your story. So when you say your name, your name would mean something. When Odysseus’s men ate the lotus in the land of the Lotus-eaters, they became oblivious and forgot about wanting to be home. The state of not doing anything is perhaps the equivalent of becoming a bum. Unless you consciously want to be a bum. Else you’re a nothing. Let’s get trippy! Good writing. Irene Toh Editor Fall 2020 5 The only Journey is the one within. —Rainer Maria Rilke 6 Contents Misky Braendeholm, Of Home 10 Paula Bonnell, Florida Haiku 11 Paula Bonnell, In The Hot Sun, By A Deserted Barn 12 Corbett Buchly, hollowed light 13 Corbett Buchly, the long cry settling on dust 14 Jeff Burt, I Walk with Nietzsche on Saddle Mountain 15 Alan Cohen, Travel 17 Carolyn Clark, Arrival CDG – 2014 18 Barbara Daniels, The Rainbow Coat 19 Barbara Daniels, The Rome Notebook 20 Mark Danowsky, Tragedy 21 Holly Day, Out in the Wild 22 Holly Day, Safe 23 Holly Day, Out 24 Edilson Ferreira, Stayed by the Way 25 Edilson Ferreira, Fellow Walkers 26 Peter Goodwin, Return To The Grand Canyon 27 Peter Goodwin, After A Squall 28 Peter Goodwin, English Lessons in Bangkok 29 John Grey, If In Doubt, Remember 30 John Grey, From One Place To Another 31 John Grey, That Storm At The Lake 32 Diane Jackman, Against the Rules 33 7 Gurupreet K. Khalsa, The Samosa Man 34 Ron. Lavalette, The Quest 35 Ron. Lavalette, Altered Itinerary 36 Lori Levy, Coughing Coyotes 37 Lori Levy, A Table Among The Weeds 38 Marie C Lecrivain, The Weaver’s Tale 39 Karla Linn Merrifield, Thinking It Over 40 Karla Linn Merrifield, Ars Poetica 41 Shelly Narang, A Guided Heart Tour 42 Shelly Narang, Napkin in the Café 43 Akshaya Pawaskar, In the Enthralling Buddhist Land 44 Akshaya Pawaskar, Origins 46 John D Robinson, The Taste 47 Judith Sanders, Backwards, Before 48 Judith Sanders, Night Journey 50 Judith Sanders, Traveling Woman Takes Out the Trash 52 Emil Sinclair, Traces 54 Emil Sinclair, No Heroics, Please 56 Emil Sinclair, There’s No Time 58 Elizabeth Spencer Spragins, High Trails 60 Elizabeth Spencer Spragins, In the Pueblo 61 Greg Stidham, The Kansas I remember 62 Greg Stidham, At A Campground In Nebraska In Spring 63 Greg Stidham, October, East-bound On I-80 64 Ivor Steven, The Universe and My Backyard 65 8 Ivor Steven, The Chalice of Champagne 66 Debi Swim, Shouns, Tennessee 1961 67 Debi Swim, Life Is A Journey 68 Alan Toltzis, Unfamiliar Terrain 69 Alan Toltzis, Texas 70 Mark Tulin, Journey’s Breath 71 Mark Tulin, El Paso Travelers 72 Mark Tulin, Walking In Sand 73 Elise Woods, San Lucas Mission 74 Mantz York, End Of The Line, Southport 75 Mantz York, Schrödinger’s Train 76 9 Of Home by Misky Braendeholm Mum embroidered us into a picturesque past.

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