Traveler’s Tales

 

~ Neil Harding M^cAlister

 

 

I’m not a pirate or a hard rock miner,     

Not a cowboy on the open range.

I’m not the pilot of a huge airliner  

Or a bum whose wild-eyed looks are strange.

 

The voices you hear speaking from these pages,

Are but mere inventions; for you see,

Poetic license down throughout the ages

Fakes first person, shams veracity.

 

The fascinating scenes that life’s presenting           

Give incentive to poetic skill.          

Why leave embarrassed readership resenting

Mawkish, autobiographic swill

 

When we can venture to exotic places --

Tokyo, India, Istanbul or Spain --         

And read strange stories in those strangers’ faces?

Let me, by their telling, entertain.

 

Though daily life seems dull and automatic,                  

Rich imagination rarely fails

To carry dreamers off on some dramatic

Flights of fancy -- with a traveler’s tales!

 

 

© 2006, NHMcA

The Old Bazaar

Istanbul, Turkey