The Luggage

Travel is a vanishing act Only to those who are left behind. What the traveler knows Is that he accompanies himself, Unwieldy baggage that can’t be checked, Stolen, or lost, or mistaken. So one took, past outposts of empire, “Calmly as if in the British Museum,” Not only her Victorian skirts, Starched shirtwaists, and umbrella, but her faith In the civilizing mission of women, Her backaches and insomnia, her innocent valor; Another, friend of witch-doctors, Living on native chop, Trading tobacco and hooks for fish and fetishes, Heralded her astonishing arrival Under shivering stars By calling, “It’s only me!” A third, Intent on savage customs, and to demonstrate That a woman could travel as easily as a man, Carried a handkerchief damp with wifely tears And only once permitted a tribal chieftain To stroke her long, golden hair.