New Lease On Life (The End Of Costa Rica Trip)

So is it true, as writer claims,
That change of venue healing brings?
Especially when it comes quite
And do its healing powers last?

When we came home last night quite late
Connecting flights of prefixed date
With passport checks, security scans
Brought us before our customs man.

“From Cowsta Rica now, you say?
Step over there, now, let me sae” –
He shook the car down best one can
In search of drugs or contraband.

Was quite surprising now to see –
This customs-man was quite like me;
Not as the others that we’d seen
But one to keep our country clean.

Twelve hundred photos on the chip
Records some aspects of our trip
Impact of scenery quite sublime
Has given me new eyes for mine –

I see the bull-rush by the road
Not quite as fancy as that toad
But, like the darkening prairie sky,
Evokes deep feelings as I drive.

I feel the urge to look again
At trees and sloughs and fields of grain
To ask, “so who are we up here
In this vast land I hold so dear?”

As I my website log checkout
To see what traffic’s been about
Amazed I note hits on my site
From fourteen countries in one night.

I check to see just where they’ve gone
And see it to a single poem
I’d written back when life was new
And “joyful, Joyful” replaced blue.

So, we can also change our place
Without impacting face-to-face
But through the net expand our view
My words passed on by wire to you.

We drove for miles to catch our plane
Book-tapes relieved our boredom’s pain
Love story from the Balkan war
Brought healing to our love once more.

What does this trip and change of scene
To writer, graphic artist mean
By way of health to gut and heart
Will it reflect now in my art?

Eight weeks from now when I look back
On therapeutic art’s new track
I hope that words and photos show
More than my conscious mind can know –

Of life that’s past and present here
What’s happened in my life more clear –
So I can grow into a world
Far bigger for this nightmare’s whirl.

A sudden change of venue came
As snow is gone – it’s spring again.
My scope was clean, new months of life;
Sum of this change – new lease on life.

navigation