Wordventures Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

Between Tawang and Bumla,
It is said there are 150 lakes.
Today we saw at least twenty-five
Expanses of water, some edged with ice.

Suddenly the word ‘tarn’ floating
Came to my mind from ‘Fidelity’
A poem by Wordsworth I did in school,
‘Tarn’ is a small lake high in the mountains.

Across the chasm of fifty-five years,
The contextual importance of the word,
Bubbles up within me, as I wind my way
To Bumla to step on to Chinese territory.

What if I were to find the word is gone,
No longer in use, in the dictionaries;
Marked obsolete or extinct; but for me,
Still the word lives within my brain-cells.

Like that dog, I am loyal to the word -
Riches of experiences are embedded
In images, recalled mostly in words,
Sometimes in other forms of fine arts.

I find that pure travel from anywhere
To anywhere out of the way thrills me;
There should be no objective behind the travel,
Not a business proposition, or specific destination.

It is during these peregrinations,
That my mind dives deep,
Or wanders around and comes up
With experiences to be put in poems.

I know, I know many would not read them:
Dismiss them as diary, or as prose;
But it does not matter: I like this form
To release what process goes on inside.

After all, established poets have written
How much of poetry? You wade through pages
And then come up with two poetic lines
To be quoted, and read again and again?

Your reading of poetry should change:
You should not look for ‘poetic’ lines,
But see beneath the words and images,
Whether anything worthwhile is conveyed.

When T S Eliot writes of ‘smokefall’,
It becomes worthy of comment:
So should it be when I fly into the clouds
And high mountains on my wordventures?