Waypoints

By John Delaney

About the book: Far ranging in its geography, Waypoints is a collection of poems that mark the itinerary of a poet wanderer—in matter and mind—over many years. As he acknowledges in his statement about the book, John often writes about places he has been because, like a GPS system, they reflect the ups and downs, turns and twists (tone and tenor), of the mental and emotional life-journey he has been taking. Believing there is no better teacher and no better resource for the imagination than nature, John is most grounded when he is in some remote place, enjoying the challenge it presents and the adventure it becomes. These poems take the reader to unique locales around the world, from Port Townsend, Washington, where John now lives, to Nepal, Africa, and South America, where he has trekked. In each case, the presence of place informs his themes, such as time, family, and natural world wonder. Placed in the pages’ margins, the addition of latitude/longitude coordinates for the actual settings of the poems adds a more specific geographic level that curious readers may wish to explore on Google Earth. Included with John’s trek to Machu Picchu with his son are the actual photographs he took on their journey that inspired his haiku. Whether formal or not, with rhyme or without, the poems in this volume will challenge the reader to examine his or her own paths and the stops along them that have made the most impression—questioning how and why such experiences enable us to move forward in a reflective and grateful manner. John is the former curator of historic maps at Princeton University. A graduate of Syracuse’s Writing Program in 1976, John offers Waypoints as his first collection. Why did he wait 40 years? Let’s say that life intervened—and a lot of travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PBS Publications
• Release date: Mar 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9780912887579

Book preview

point.

Weathervane

Where you come from,

where you’ve been—

wind,

I have a way of knowing your name.

Once you catch my attention

I am all yours.

Take me where you’re going.

Bordentown Marsh

You put in at Bordentown Beach

next to the Delaware River,

having planned to rise with the tide

up Crosswicks Creek

as far as you can reach,

till it begins to subside, turns,

and delivers you back where you started—

but never back where you began

thinking of the marsh in the summer. See,

where you began is not where you will be.

Stroke by stroke, you paddle past

the yacht club with cabin cruisers

lined up along the pier,

bearing names like Mezzaluna, Fast

and Furious, and Fare Thee Well, My Friend.

Under the trestle bridge of the light rail line,

the current carries you beyond

Point Breeze, Joseph Bonaparte’s

cliff estate, now just a memory.

Here, for our purposes, the marshland starts.

Along the right, stretches of wild rice

Lenape once harvested. To the left,

a maze of waterways beckon,

twisting through the crowding spatterdock

and blue-spiked pickerelweed

and narrowing canyons of rushes.

You are not to be sucked in, I reckon.

Onward, the wider stream flushes

out, with just enough dalliance,

log-sunning turtles before they plunk

from sight. A heron flaps off the bank

in dowager drag. I once followed

a beaver that wanted to be followed,

leading me away from his hangout,

till he dove and I tracked his bubbles.

Then he surfaced and whacked the water

with his broad flat tail, turned about

and ducked beneath the boat and disappeared—

simply dismissing his troubles

with one emphatic statement.

Minnows scatter in bursts

of silver ripples against the shoreline.

The day grows full of festive finds and firsts.

A fish flings itself carelessly

above the water, momentarily

suspended in a brighter, lighter world—

as if to glimpse a life

beyond its lukewarm comfort zone:

this moving palette of green and yellow

and