Not intent on arriving

I am a traveler

I have tickets to everywhere

I know that isn’t fair

And if you think this is hot air

Allow me to share;

Manuscripts are my airfare!

A book in hand

Is worth a ticket around the world

Many that one could afford

With a yearning to understand

The wisdom of the gods

You are no longer blind

When I reads I paint

Pictures of emotions felt

By peoples different

In hearts, of lands distant

Pains and laughs otherwise faint

Becomes suddenly so acute

Every time I read

I taste wine and rare bread

From the bakeries of the dead

And somehow breed

With their attitudes and creeds

Gradually I am freed

On scribbled tablets

I find dark alleys

And numerous tunnels

Leading to elongated railways

Some, wide and common pathways

Most, narrow and troubled waterways

Whenever I read

I find and plant a seed

That painfully grows to feed

My innermost desires and needs

Thus, I ascend

That is why I read.

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." -- St. Augustine