Learning to Travel by Julene Tripp Weaver | Poetry

Poetry – Issue 3 | February 2009

Learning to Travel

by Julene Tripp Weaver

She will learn French,
enough to greet and shop
become known.
A French baker befriends her.
After a long summer
she stays on into the fall
writes poems, picks wild herbs.
An old woman cooks with her.
They sit in silence
while the sun sets. In the evening
she lights candles, when hungry
they share bread and cheese.

A circus comes to town,
young children knock
on her door to watch
elephants parade in the street.
Tents are raised.
A knife thrower invites her for his act.
The wind of flying knives pulses
dreams of moving on with the circus
until there is no question. She will go.
She pulls together a bag
says good-bye to the old woman
to the baker, to the children,
moves to the next town
beneath the throw of the knife.

A native New Yorker, Seattle-ite Julene Tripp Weaver has traveled through Mexico three times, to France once, breezed through Scandinavia, scootered through Bermuda and dreams of Hawaii. A poem from her chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails The Blues was featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. Her poems can be found in Arabesques Review, Crab Creek Review, The Healing Muse, Knock, and Main Street Rag.

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Literary Bohemian

Poetry – Issue 3 | February 2009