ISSUE FOUR
August 1998

William Heath

William Heath William Heath is a professor of English at Mount Saint Mary's College and is the editor of The Monocacy Valley Review. His books include: The Children Bob Moses Led (Milkweed 1995) and a book of poems, The Walking Man (Icarus 1994). His work has appeared in various magazines, including: The Massachusetts Review, The South Carolina Review, and The Southern Review respectively.
Travel    Read Along with the Author


Travel is the saddest
pleasure in the world,
moving at whim through
places we will never
return to, faces we
will never see again,
and words we do not
understand. We travel
to say we have traveled,
and as we go we squint
one eye, close the other,
and hold between us
and the thing we have
come to see a contraption
out of Plato's cave
(complete with its flash
of fire) so that when
we return to the place
we left from and throw
on the living room wall
the shadows of where we
might have been, we say,
"Look, that's me, with
the Parthenon on my shoulders,"
and, "Look, that's me again,
holding up that leaning tower
with one hand!"

 

 

William Heath: Poetry
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