The Thursday Short Poem will be on hiatus for the summer months, returning in September. (Click the poetry archive to read hundreds of TSPs going back to 2004, including many of my most favorite pieces of verse.) This Linda Pastan poem appears in the Spring 2010 edition of Ploughshares. It is fitting for the beginning of another hiatus.
Traveling Light
I’m only leaving you
for a handful of days,
but it feels as though
I’ll be gone forever—
the way the door closes
behind me with such solidity,
the way my suitcase
carries everything
I’d need for an eternity
of traveling light.
I’ve left my hotel number
on your desk, instructions
about the dog
and heating dinner. But
like the weather front
they warn is on its
way with its switchblades
of wind and ice,
our lives have minds
of their own
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