The Luggage
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Travel is a vanishing act
Only to those who are left behind.
What the traveler knows
Is that he accompanies himself,
Unwieldy baggage that can’t be checked,
Stolen, or lost, or mistaken.
So one took, past outposts of empire,
“Calmly as if in the British Museum,”
Not only her Victorian skirts,
Starched shirtwaists, and umbrella, but her faith
In the civilizing mission of women,
Her backaches and insomnia, her innocent valor;
Another, friend of witch-doctors,
Living on native chop,
Trading tobacco and hooks for fish and fetishes,
Heralded her astonishing arrival
Under shivering stars
By calling, “It’s only me!” A third,
Intent on savage customs, and to demonstrate
That a woman could travel as easily as a man,
Carried a handkerchief damp with wifely tears
And only once permitted a tribal chieftain
To stroke her long, golden hair.
This poem starts out as a collective of travelers...and then shifts into the focus of a solo woman traveler. They state the differences of physical baggage that a woman normally brings along and this woman who is trying to let some of that go, to experience travel lightly- to be a "lighter traveler", to go into those places that scare you but you have always wanted to go- both in the outside world and in the inside world.
ReplyDeleteIn similar lines of thought I often think about all of the men who have been drawn to a life of meditation and how there are so few "famous" women yogis. Of course, I question the differences in the brain makeup first and the role of the male and female genders, but in the end, it is all the same. The "travel" of meditation, the thoughts and struggles that we share in this life are all very similar.
The last line of this really makes me smile- I hope that it plays on the concept that women like sex, too...need sex too, and I don't think that could be talked about enough! Agreed, the hormonal differences are there, but it is still natural to take a foreign lover....!
It mentions three women: "so one took," "another," and "a third."
DeleteWomen have to break the lines and liberate themselves in order to experience the freedoms awarded to men. How like so many things, travelers are considered men and then these women are the pioneers. I see Jane Goodalls and Peace Corps Volunteers.