Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Exploring

Congratulations on the new library, because it isn't just a library. 

It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, 

a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, 

a teacher that knows more than any human being, 

a friend that will amuse you and console you -- 

and most of all, a gateway, to a better and 

happier and more useful life.

― Isaac Asimov 



SOURCE



Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Exploring

Explorers, rare individuals and groups, step into the unknown.  Exploring led to Christopher Columbus's discovery of a "new" world that many Americans will celebrate this weekend.  

Explorers, all of us, step into what we don't know.  

Your Challenge: Write a poem of exploration.

 

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

― T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays

But first whom shall we send

In search of this new world, whom shall we find

Sufficient? Who shall tempt, with wand'ring feet

The dark unbottomed infinite abyss

And through the palpable obscure find out

His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight

Upborne with indefatigable wings

Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive

The happy isle?

                       ― John Milton, Paradise Lost

  

I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. An infant who has just learned to hold up his head has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment. He hasn’t the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to find out. In a couple of years, what he will have learned instead is how to fake it: he’ll have the cocksure air of a squatter who has come to feel he owns the place. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why.

― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

For those who are new here:  

1. Post your exploration poem on your site, and then link it here.
2. If you use a picture include its link.  
3. Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 
4. Leave a comment here.
5. Visit and comment on our poems.

(Next week's Motif will be Trees.)

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