The Woman Traveler, Home Poem by James P. Roberts

The field of stone crosses
stretched beyond the eye
cry out against a reddened sky
of a sunset in Lithuania.
The voices say 'Here is our home.'
Where is yours?

You sit in a tiny decorated bar
a few steps from the Louvre
on a Parisian night and finger
memories of Hemingway, Proust.
Colin speaks seven languages
and makes a mean martini.
Footsteps tap on worn cobblestone,
pointing out history.

Gentle, compassionate heart
at the bedside of a dying writer
entombed in Los Angeles.
Outside the stuccoed townhouse
H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D beckons brightly
against the dry hills.
Here is a mystery!

Monsoon rains sweep all speech
outside, floods the tawdry broken alleys
of slumside Bangkok.
Curious black eyes follow a slim figure
westering in search of tattered currency:
an oil-tipped pallette once held by Manet.

Incongruity abounds in that windy city
by the lake. Nouveaux riche gathered
in walnut-panelled catacomb looming
high above tumultous traffic, yet named
after a vanished Southwestern people
who worshipped a hole in the ground.

It is a large world, my dear,
when one is traveling the bright ways.
Ah, but a very small one, dear,
when the front door is finally in sight.