Thursday, August 21, 2025: Florence Weinberger's "The Journey From Scratch"

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“Six times nominated for a Pushcart, once for Best of the Net, I am the author of six books of poetry, most recently These Days of Simple Mooring, winner of the Blue Light Press Book Award. Poems have appeared in journals including Calyx, Rattle, Mantis, River Styx, Ellipsis, Poet Lore, Comstock Review, Baltimore Review, Nimrod, Cider Press Review, Poetry East, Shenandoah, and numerous anthologies.”


The Journey From Scratch


Describing the world is easier than finding a place in it.

Richard Siken


I thought I’d make Siken’s sentence my epigraph because

he’d compressed down to its pith a modicum of wisdom that

zings straight to the thing. Saved for its certainty, I waited

for the ping to plunge poetically into the quest; finally poked,

I started from scratch, and found I didn’t believe a word of it.


Journeys begin in the body, extracted from dreams and

green longings. I was born, stood, walked, a world’s map

before me, magnification of Frost’s two paths, from hamlets

to continents, until I entered a small house by the sea.

It wasn’t mine, it had a sign.


What made me think I’d found my place? Smell of brine,

sense of distance, hint of solitude, the house was staged,

someone else’s taste in chairs, nowhere near mine.

Like movie wizards, mind vacated every room, buffed

the floors, unlocked the windows so the sea poured in,


kept the white walls, granting pinks of dawn and gaudy

sunsets a blank canvas. They took my offer. I went back

to what had waned, emptied drawers, packed up books and

underwear. Why describe the world at all. Just talk

about the place you made yourself, and the blue, oh, the blue.


© Florence Weinberger

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