When you return from your travels, those
who remember you went ask how it was.
They ask in the most general terms
meaning they would like the most general answer,
pleasant and short.  But if you are lucky, two or three
will be curious, or have time, or love you
enough to say, pulling forward a chair,
What were your three favorite things? or
What is the thing you will never forget? 
And then you will need to know
how to become a raconteur if you wish to share
anything at all from the great montage:
San Marco Square in moonlight,
bike riding in the freezing air along an Amsterdam
canal, the peasant woman in headscarf outside
your post-Yugoslavian complex in the bleak playground
of Lljubljana, her cloth bags, her large-eyed pale child,
your sense of isolation and the bitter cold.  You choose
your favorite days, sweet as apples in a green bowl,
or your terrible days, bitter as icy water rising up
your legs, but either way they're really yours alone,
will go with you, finally,
when you go.

© by Gail Entrekin.
Used with the author's permission.