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.
XXXBut even Ibn Battuta, if here, would agree
XXXDetours 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.
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