Travel

I have never been to Buenos Aires or Juan-les-Pins
           for that matter, except in the dark

'40s and '50s films — and it was never Jean Seberg or
           Ingrid Bergman who ran up to me, shaking

the gold ocean from her short hair, looking into my eyes
           with all the lost minutes a black & white sea

withheld. Yet I recall the tangerine suns and sapphire
           lagoons on postcards of French Polynesia,

awash in junk shop drawers, and a lavish night sky
           over Yosemite, that deep blue table cloth

and the bread-crumb stars spinning evenly away from us
           toward a barricade of bright islands

we are never going to see. In this way, we received
           more darkness than light — the 10%

that escaped on the blast at the start, our souvenir
           of somewhere we've never been. Dreamers,

walkers in our easy sleep, we unfolded our arms and
           filled them with the lost destinations,

the local outskirts of the air, with the last image of the sea
           which compares us to clouds under sail,

in transit to who knows where. Sundown, and the shore
           birds head homeward with the song

that first pulled them away — the sky, like everything,
           still unresolved. You can hear the dark

rustling overhead, the sky we can never return to, empty-
           handed as we are with only our obvious

hearts as guide. Any way you look at it, it's a long way
           to go to have only come this far.

-- Christopher Buckley