Like Old Faithful, which I have never visited,
I get notifications of new sites to explore via Atlas Obscura, a wondrous travel page
for eccentric treasures and places over the world,
each one tantalizingly more far away and remote,
suggesting a reality outside the realm of quarantine and paper towel counts.

Currently awaiting my rueful inattention in my clogged in-box:
Visiting the Brooklyn Trail Mining Ruins of Fayetteville, WV;
A Vietnam Culinary trip;
the Hobbit Houses of Culver City, CA;
a Gargoyle and Grotesque tour in Newcastle, England;
and a cemetery tour of Doodletown, NY, a town with no living residents but three cemeteries.

Flush in time as I am at the moment, and willing and able to go to anyplace in the world,
I find it ironic we’re suddenly grounded for the sins of the overgrown child
who resides in the Oval Office.
Could the ineptitude have been part of a larger plan? Is that even possible?
First, prohibit visa applications, then bungle our response to a pandemic to the extent that
no European countries will accept us, and probably Asia and Africa don’t want to smile at us
if we were to walk through their airports, either.

Where’s left? What’s remains to compare to the hidden nooks and crannies shown me
by Atlas Obscura?
My own state? In my mental state, do I want to cross into other counties, and be perforce
to how they do or do not respond to a changed world?

I wish it were possible to go so far in that we were on the outside again.
If we woke up and pretended we were in a different place – a prison –
would we be more willing to comply with the simplest of precautions?

Maybe I should just pick up any number of the books waiting for me to turn off the news.
There’s a lot of travel in Jude, the Obscure, the hapless family leaving behind addresses
as soon as their matrimonial secret is revealed, all leading to the tragic death of Father Time.

The unfairness of faith being the cause of its own demise is a tough lesson to share,
but maybe the unsilent minority needs to listen to what they’re actually being told.
There’s not just a whiff of sulfur at the rallies they attend…