Advice For a Wayfarer, by Alan Girling

The Wayfarer, by Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlands) c.1500

Advice For a Wayfarer

Bid the cage welcome, rusting as you pass,
the leaky barrel, shattered glass, the shutter
​dangling, canine mange even, pissing 
poltroonery, the benighted roofless, their ruthless 
importunity, all tumble-down tumidity.
For I know you know to take the rain, your fill, 
only from the dawn, flame from the hard earth dew. 
Shillelagh and blade are true; your ladle, awl, 
they’ve served you well; though fowl and swine
gorge, leave only dust, mud and grime, 
don’t turn askance; look there too for what you seek.
Any bird, bound or free by circumstance, may sing.
There’s more than one way for you or I to go:
skin a cat, beat the path, unhoof a stag, or doe.

Alan Girling

Alan Girling writes poetry mainly, sometimes fiction, non-fiction, or plays. His work has been seen in print, heard on the radio, at live readings, even viewed in shop windows. Such venues include Blynkt, Panoply, Hobart, The MacGuffin, Smokelong Quarterly, FreeFall, Galleon, Blue Skies, and CBC Radio among others. He is happy to have had poems place in four local poetry contests and to have a play produced for the Walking Fish Festival in Vancouver, B.C.