Passport, Please?

Fellow Traveler,

I'm looking for that place 

I think you just came from There

I can smell it on your skin

just now

so close

It's that Place where Time is frozen

not cold

as in Siberia, or those Potemkin Villages

but warm 

melted in sepia

It's not the place with the Great Fountain

of Youth-I mean

I like me now, but I think I'll like me more

later, at least

when we're more than just acquaintances

There's no reason to delay the journey 

any longer

I already freed up my schedule with 

lazy white gaps

I'm ready to go

to take this Trip

finally to see with my own two eyes

I expect it will be exactly 

as I expected

when I Arrive

I'm sure you've seen pictures-

read the books-

seen the movies-

the best is due soon

It will show precisely what is there

how it looks 

at any moment in Time

that frozen moment

But I simply got Lost

I was hoping for directions to the place

with No Name

You would recognize it
by the ghosts in the wall

Where I am known and liked, 

better than myself

Can you take me there?


Image By Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons, Forum Romanum Rome Italy.