A Personal Odyssey

 

The meanderings through a northern industrial landscape,

amidst the drudgery of a bygone revolutions.

My horizons embraced new worlds,

cultures and peoples unlike my own.

I took risks and accepted challenges,

to travel afar leaving behind much unhappiness.

With God's good grace and personal initiatives,

I encountered the ancient suqs of Arabia,

stood in the oasis of Marrakesh to behold the Atlas mountains.

 

These journeys were inter twined with lustful pursuits,

all of which I carried in my trusty knapsack of life.

To the tropical islands of the Leeward chain,

in forests of verdant density, where the steam rose between the trees,

Along the endless highways of California,

to the desert of Nevada and the luminosity of San Francisco.

Into the dark sinister past of Eurrope's history,

to the capital where painful memories lay dormant.

 

Then to that blessed sea whose coastlines touch,

the orient, the continents of Africa, Europe and the levant.

Walking in the footsteps of Christ,

sitting beside the sea of Galilee and the Jordan river.

Upwards to the Holy City set within its ancient walls, 

then westward to the sounds of the classical Spanish guitar,

into the alley ways where flamenco schools stamp their mark.

Amongst the descendents of Spaniards and the Moors,

I saw a glimmer of hope where peoples had once lived in harmony.

Throughout these travels of the body, mind and soul,

I developed a maturity of self worth and resilience.

 

I met with unbridled and ill concealed prejudice,

insults and discrimination with violence and heartache.

Love had played its role as I discovered passion,

commitment but also betrayal and caprice,

Throughout this odyssey I carried much in my heart,

the overwhelming beauty of the created order,

and man's avarice, aggression and deceit.

I shall now open my knapsack and pour out its contents,

for the annals of yet another soul into perpetuity.