Ibn Battuta's Advice to an Adventurer

by Reid Cooper

Friend:  Any great voyage, like yours, will begin 
Not with the detailed planning of a route on grand charts 
The course of events will overtake.  No, it's the heart's 
Compass you must first consult;  calmly watch it spin, 
The needle, 'til it stops to point you to your path 
--Though it cannot say your final destination, 
It will guide your way, give strength and inspiration, 
Then leave it for your head to work out the boring math. 
It's a lost journey that's begun in thoughtless haste 
Without once pausing to orient with more than maps, 
Like it were "Follow-the-Leader" or racing laps, 
Arriving to learn your trip's been a dead-end waste. 
   But even Ibn Battuta, if here, would agree 
   Detours sometimes reveal just where you long to be.

Reid Cooper is an Ottawa-born lawyer now with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Most of his publications are hyper-dry public policy stuff, although his poetry has appeared in the Carleton Literary Review and Ottawa's (now-defunct) The Skinny.