photoart: ralph murre
Had I
stayed home and married
by Wilda
Morris
Had I stayed
home and married
that girl in San Francisco
I would not
have known
the kingly
feel of perching
on the lead
camel in a caravan
crossing
rolling grasslands
of Mongolia
across the high
dunes of the Ordos ,
cresting like
waves and breaking,
the hazy smoke
of dung fires
at daybreak,
the sight of women
dipping water
from the creek,
the
storyteller with his tales
of princes,
dragons, demons
punctuated by
the ping
of a tuning
fork.
Had I stayed
home and married
that girl in San Francisco
I would not
have wakened on a houseboat,
the Yangtze in
flood tearing it
from the levee
where we’d moored,
not rescued
frightened peasants,
nor had to
push clawing hands
from the side
when the boat
was already
too full.
Had I stayed
home and married
that girl in San Francisco
I would not
have stood
before the
Dragon Throne
in the Forbidden City
when Pu-Yi was
declared Emperor
again, nor had
to escape
General Li by
donning golden robes
and joining a
procession of monks.
Had I stayed
home and married
that girl in San Francisco
I would not
have caravanned
into an April
blizzard, lost
my snow
goggles, had my sight
ruined. But oh, sure as my name
is Fred Meyer
Schroder,
what I had
already seen and done
gave me a
lifetime of tales to tell
that girl in San Francisco
when I did go
home to marry her.
~ first
published in Prairie Light Review
