Volume 5 | Issue 1 | April - May
2011 |
The Way of the Tourist
Nigel Burwood
Take the funicular railway,
kiss the Blarney Stone
walk the Boboli Gardens,
ride the London Eye.
This is what we do
while we are alive.
Up the Eiffel Tower,
down the Blue Grotto
round the Coliseum,
onwards to Angkor Wat
back through Cumberland Gap
always best as a tourist
with camera, phrase book, and map.
Ignore experts,
go where everyone goes,
surrender willingly
to the way of the tourist.
Swim in the Med,
drink the local brew,
visit Elvis's grave.
This is what we do
while we are alive.
Nigel Burwood - Nigel Burwood, British, lives in Santa Cruz, California and also in London and Norfolk part of the year. When he isn't writing poems and publishing them in literary journals, he sells books on the Internet, attends auctions and plays golf. A collection of his poetry is currently published in World's Strand, an international anthology (academici/UK 2006) for which he suggested the title, helping to mold the vision. An English major with a degree from Southampton, favorite poets and writers include Baudelaire, Eliot, Borges, Nabokov and Meades.
