Content When I Get There.

Like so many places it has been a while since I have been there,
and often it seems, in the off season. Perhaps I am missing something,
seeing these place so famous and full of tourists. Perhaps I miss them
in their prime, see them when they are half closed, when
the street music and buskers are home, and no sensible artist
is by the water with brush and canvas, 

Still this is my preferred season, a little cool. A little gray,
Almost empty except for the ones who are determined to stay,
who make this, and the other places you travel home.
We are a wandering world. People pick up and go and move,
Change jobs. Change gods. Change lovers, always looking
for something brighter. Something more.

Which makes me a stranger in my own world, a lover of travel
but only when I can return. Content with the place and work and love
I have. Content to travel and see it all, a little deeper than most,
taking my time, a different sort of tourist who is never in a rush
to see the next thing, and never in a rush to come home, Yet
content when I get there.

About this poem

One of the gifts of older age is that I carry my contentment with me now. I don’t need things or places or situations. I am content most anywhere I land. Being that way transforms life.

Also a poem about visiting Asbury Park, where the picture was taken. I’ve only been there once, in the off season of course, but it left a mark,

Tom