Armchair Adventure–Monday Meanderings and Weekly Photo Challenge

This week at WordPress’ Weekly Photo Challenge, the challenge is to take an Adventure–literal or metaphoric. I’m going with the latter and adding a poem. This will do double duty as my post for Monday Meanderings in an uncommonly busy time for us.

Photo: V. Slotto

 

On Reading

 

These days I spend my evenings in Ethiopia.

Torrential rains flood the shores of the Blue Nile.

 

I cut for stone in Operating Theater 3,

outside I hear the blaze of a failed coup d’etat.

 

Dear Africa, I’ve trod the single file paths of

leafy jungles, ‘neath trees of Poisonwood,

 

through forests that devour, that feed on lives

of those misled in service of God’s holy name.

 

With Little Bee I, too, would flee to distant shores,

escape atrocities (only to be hurled once again upon your mercy.)

 

From Haiti also I’ve sought refuge. The slave of Valmorain set free but

lost to love forever and to my land, the island far beneath the sea.

 

As well would I take leave from Oklahoma’s dust

only to be lost to greater desperation in the land of wrathful vines.

 

A silent (though not passive) observation,  I stand by, witness

the demise of hope, the emptiness of Gatsby and Buchanan

 

or see a tree spring forth from wretched poverty in Brooklyn’s

tenements where branches spread if roots grow strong and deep.

 

For those who read there is no place forbidden,

no mountain that cannot be scaled, no culture

 

left forgotten, no life condemned to end in an obscure whimper.

No era will I leave untouched if I but open up a book and read.

Photo: V. Slotto