The Shine Journal

Why I Always Keep A Valise By The Bed

 

By

 

Sandra Anfang

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love to waken in the half-light,

Where it guards the cedar chest.

Standing at attention, its perky checkered ribbon

Poised like a girlish bow,

Ready for a jaunt in the park.

 

It doesn’t matter that I have no ticket,

No cab honks in the road.

I dimple just to see it,

Sentinel of the spiral path

That wends beyond the boundary of my life.

 

I will always follow,

Like a sleepwalker in a dream

So pungent I cannot but choose

To grasp the lead that pulls me

Toward the borderline.

 

I ache to see it every morning,

Totem of new eyes,

New ports for entering the world.

The sherpa in whose gaze

I lay my worries down to rest.

 

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BIO: I have been writing since high school, when an aware teacher saw a spark and fanned it into a small flame. I find inspiration everywhere, especially when I am not looking for it.I find inspiration everywhere: among my students, in my son's heavy metal  band, and in my disregarded yard.

MOTIVATION: I was weeding my closet because the local thrift shop needed donations. I filled a valise and left it by my cedar chest, at the foot of my bed. It took a few days to deliver to the thrift shop. I liked looking at that suitcase; it made me feel like I was about to embark on a new adventure.

 

Photo by : Marta Juez