DESTINATIONS
for Jenny Smagala Luciano
It was never meant to be a practical guide,
if you are both blessed and cursed
to live from one surprise to the next.
In truth, you prefer the out-of-the-way places
to the paved land bridge across
what is always visible and taken for granted.
The unseen dots eventually connect
and make one wary of hope:
the lump that should not be there,
or the hesitant look that comes too late.
Children have taught you to accept
gratitude over happiness,
as you faithfully follow the heart’s traceable map
of far dreams leading ever away
but always returning home.
Mark Osaki's work has appeared in various journals and
anthologies, including:
The Georgia
Review, Carrying the
Darkness—The Poetry of the Vietnam War (Avon, Texas Tech University
Press), South Carolina Review,
Men of Our Time—An Anthology of Male
Poetry in Contemporary America
(University of Georgia Press),
Breaking Silence—An
Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets (Greenfield Review
Press), Onset Review, Drown In My Own Fears and Garrison
Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac
(National Public Radio).
He has
received awards for his poetry from the University of California at
Berkeley, San Francisco Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Council and the
National Endowment for the Arts.
He works in the Domestic Violence program at Asian Americans for Community
Involvement in San Jose, California.