TIME'S INVISIBLE INK

My father wrote this poem for me in his self-published poetry book, Time's Invisible Ink, shortly before his death. It is an ode to our relationship, and more than anything else--an ode to my love of travel.

TIME'S INVISIBLE INK

for Naomi

It took a long time to navigate the map

Folded as it was and tucked into unexplored

Regions where destinations are never reached

Sliced through by creased longitudes and latitudes

I discovered your wandering equatorial moods

Jungles teeming with screeching figures of speech

Tunneling all the way from Java to Manhattan

Falling over the edge into sublime transcendence

At the juncture of Fate and Happenstance

A place I can't find without you leading me there

Beyond what's known as the Tropic of Amaretto

Washed up on beaches agleam in your eyes

Always looming on horizons amid vanishing points

Dissolved in time's invisible ink

 --Gordon Bishop

© Gordon Bishop, 2006