Blue Fire

If I don't make it in the world of poetry, I'm going to travel agency school. And then I'm going to book all my own vacations all the time. And I'm going to teach everyone else how to have fun on my itineraries and live vicariously through my clients--only so that I can make enough money for each adventure.

I'm pretty sure in my ideal world, that's what I would do. And I'm going to come up with all these zany places to send people so they experience places normal tourists don't ever see. I want to teach the world to fall in love with travel and with learning another culture, rather than just treading our toes all over someone else's turf.

This desire is a direct result of my current "vacation planning"--I began outlining a very detailed itinerary of Ireland: How-To-See-The-Most-And-Spend-The-Least-In-A-Month. When that proved such a brilliant success, I began planning my trip to San Francisco for this weekend. You would BELIEVE what I've got in store for myself! I'm a genius. In between grad school interviews, I'm going to ransack the city. Look out world. I've been bitten by a bug.

I really do think I may abandon my grad school ideas. Or do travel school while in grad school. WAIT that's an excellent idea. And then, once I've finished my schooling, I shall travel the world and publish stories of my adventures.

Now to find a home base. Hume Lake? Santa Barbara? San Francisco? Santa Clarita? Simi Valley? Spokane? Seattle? Washington D.C.? Where is my heart?

It is all these places. That's what makes me feel so fulfilled and content. It is all these places and their people and the blood that pulses through all our veins in the familiar heart's throb of Life.




I miss... but my heart's built itself strong enough to keep standing. Strong enough to keep pressing forward and thrive on the hope of tomorrow and not the fatigue of today. The ache is exhausting but my toes dig into the forever sands and my hands stretch to the wide sky, blue as my heart and everlasting as Joy. So many wrinkles have arched their way across my eyes in this space of time, where I am left wondering and wandering--but Still, in Peace. Resignation. Keep moving, Heart.


And everything I see glows blue and gold and the world I embrace spills into my skin
and out my fingertips, to stain, to paint the black-and white faces, the smiles, the eyes, the places
in Color.