Instructions for Traveling West: Poems

“I wrote a pep talk recently to myself on a bar napkin: no matter which road you take, it will be both glorious and unbearable. Every road is lonely. Every road, holy. The only error is not walking forth.

Yesterday, a friend in California, when giving me directions, told me I could take the trail toward the tall pines or turn left and find a field of poppies, growing gold and savage at the edge of the valley.

When I asked which to choose, she simply shrugged and said: either way, it's all heaven.”


As someone who is traveling west again, who is getting married and moving and starting a new job tomorrow and feeling all those emotions compounded, this book felt like a hug.