I heard this poem on The Writer’s Almanac this morning. It helps me visualize what I can look forward to after the next few days of constant flurry, crossing things off my lists, adding to the list, consolidating lists, dreaming of lists. Eighteen air hours to Kilimanjaro will afford me lots of time to review my life’s ten million choices! Now to read the directions on how to soak my clothes in mosquito repellent and how to use the new luggage scale.Then off to Silver Sneakers at the YWCA. After I eat a well-balanced breakfast with plenty of potassium and sprinkled with flax seed. Do the Maasai elders eat flax seed?
Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
by Dan Albergotti
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
“Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale” by Dan Albergotti from The Boatloads.© BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008. Reprinted on Writer’s Almanac.
A travel poem for you! Treading water as a metaphor for getting ready for the trip, the whale’s belly as a metaphor for jumbo jets. TT
