On the thoroughly wastrel rare occasions
When the freedom to be journeying really is
The journey’s whole reward, our inner story
Demon tempts us with the craving for something
Greater, something significant, something
More—a serendipitous adventure or fortuitous
Encounter, the best of the vanished marvels
Gathered outside our door—something worthy
Of narrating later as a kind of a boast: You see?
Were it not for our sage philosophy, treating
The journey as the reward, consider the unforeseen
Wonders we might never have known, might have ignored.
Once the dart of that tale-craving has landed, the joy
Of the wasteful journey’s so easily destroyed,
And we complete our circuit, disappointed nothing
Amazing and unexpected has floated down from heaven
To halo our meandering with reward. Waste, waste! Hiss
The ghostly obligations on our head. Waste, waste!
When we could have been working, accomplishing,
Improving ourselves instead. Yes, waste. Yes,
Embrace it. Yes. It’s not for nothing, that hole. No theory
Of everything is ever a complete theory of the hole.
If we want our wavering journeys to be doable,
Beable, we have to give up our fetish for observables.
Nothing to see here, looky loos. Nothing to be here.
Nothing was done. It’s all wasted or it’s all fine,
And every circuit’s a day, a poem, an emptied circle
Around the whole. Any old dime can turn on a dime,
And then it’s yesterday already, already past dawn,
And we are watching mist rise off the deep green
Goat Mountain from a sunny bedroom window
In the village of New Denver, British Columbia,
At half past five, Pacific Daylight Time.
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