In my personal bucket list, I'd like to visit New York City one more time, for at least a week if not a month.  Heck, make it three months, at least!  Lots of art museums and science museums there I want to plunder.  I'd like to go to the places where poets went, such as the White Horse cafe, where Dylan Thomas used to sit and write poetry and drink, and sometimes, for variation, would sit and drink and write poetry.

     Also in New York City, I'd like to go to Central Park, and visit the memorial area set up there for John Lennon, called Strawberry Fields.

     I'd also love to see a precious friend who lives near New York City, who was once a girl friend of mine--or, as it says in the song Scarborough Fair, "She once was a true love of mine"--and who is still a very dear friend I now talk with only by phone and mail.  I would love to see her again in person, if only for a brief while.

     I would like to visit the Albert Einstein archives, and rumage through and read and study the legacies of my favorite scientist for hours and days; and I would love to pay my deepest, richest respect and shed tears of love at Einstein's burial ground; and to be blessed by the light falling there, the light that he understood and explained so well.

     I would like to visit the grave of Robert G. Ingersoll, and with tears in my eyes, speak over his grave the words that he so long ago spoke in his funeral oration over the grave of his beloved younger brother.

     There are so many  people whose birth places, houses where they lived, and burial sites I would like to visit and honor.  The poets Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickensen, Sarah Teasdale, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Kahlil Gibran, Wilfred Owens, Siegfried Sassoon, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe.  The writers Goerge Orwell, Aldous Huxley, John Steinbeck.  The playwrights Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekov.  The painters Vincent Van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Rubens, Delacroix, Chigal.  The scientists and mathematicians Sir Isaac Newton, Leipniz, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Archimedes, Nikolai Tesla, Thomas Edison, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan.  The philosophers Albert Camus, Joseph Conrad, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, George Santayana, Bertrand Russel, Alfred North Whitehead, Miguel Unamuno, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Jean Paul Sartre, Walter S. Kaufmann.  The ancient tragic writers and creators of the tragedy genre, Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles.  The modern tragic writers Arthur Miller, Frank Yerby, Herman Wauk, William Gold, William Golding, William Faulkner.  Too many people and categories to name; I have to leave so many unmentioned; they can be encompassed only in my dream.

     Since I, ironically, once aspired to become a medical physician--in the field of neurology, with an intention to specialize in psychobiology or some branch of it--I would like to find out if there are any such places extant, or any archives available for study, for the great ancient pioneer physicians, Hippocrates of Greece and Galen of Rome; and also for the medieval medical pioneer Vesalius, who lost his life to tyrannical ignorance in order to bequeathe to us a life-saving knowledge of anatomy.

     I would like to visit England and see all kinds of things there-- especially Shakespeare's birthplace, and his burial crypt--so that I might see them, touch them, kiss them, cry tears over them, and feel that I had received a blessing from them. 

     In England I would also like to visit the birth homes and burial places of the poets Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Edward Fitzgerald, the two Rossettis--Dante Gabriel and Christina Georgina--and Algernon Charles Swinburne.  And a lot of others, too.

     Also in England, I would like to visit the birth place and pay my respects at the burial place of my second most loved and honored scientist, Sir. Isaac Newton.

     I'd like to travel to Ireland, and visit the birth place and burial ground of the poet Yeats.

     I'd like to go to India, and see its many mystical and ancient sites; and also, to visit the birth place and burial place of the great poet Kalidasa, the Shakespeare of India.  And to see the famous Bodhi tree, under which the prince Siddhartha Gautama sat meditating until he had transformed himself into Buddha.

     Then, on to China, to see its many ancient wonders and modern splendors; and to walk the same ground trod by Lao Tsu and Confucius.  Also, and especially, to see where the great modern Chinese poet Haizi, or Hai Tsu, lived, loved, and died.  My friend in China, Sassa, tells me that my poetry and that of Haizi are in some ways similar.  Come to think of it, I would go to China first, of all the places I have named or will name, so that I could see and speak face to face with my friend Sassa.

     I'd like to go to Russia and see, among other things, the places where Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Tugenev, and Pushkin were born, lived, and died.

     In Germany, I'd like to see the places of birth, living, and death, for the great poet and scientist Goethe; and the wonderful poet Holderlin.  I would like to go, kneel down beside, and kiss Beethovan's shrine.

     I'k like to travel all through Italy, Greece, France, and Spain; and visit the sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

     In France, I'd like to visit the grave of the American poet and musician, Jim Morrison.  And I would like to visit the birth places and pay respects at the tombs of the poets Arthur Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Apollinaire, and Lautreamont.

     In Spain, I'd like to see the birth places and pay respects at the grave sites of the inestimable Miguel Unamuno, Cervantes, Frederico Garcia Lorca, and more than a dozen others.

     The wondrous sites and sights in Italy and Greece are too well known for me to need to tally them, so I'll mention only two: the Coliseum and the Parthenon.  Also, I'd like to see whatever markers and archives there may be for the Father of Science, Thales of Greece; and the Father of Modern Science, Galileo of Italy; and the only equal of Beethovan for combining power with beauty in musical compositions, Giuseppe Verdi of Italy.

     Then give me Egypt, with the Great Pyramid and the other large yet smaller pyramids; and the two Sphinxes, the great Sphinx and the so-called baby Sphinx.  I will stand and sit in their shadows, and cast my shadow upon them; touching my present time to that ancient time, knowing that the time that I am now living in shall someday be ancient time, too.  And knowing that I myself am also only a shadow.

     Truly, I could go on and on about the traveling; so let's just say this: I'd like to see the world!

      Last but not least in my list for the lost: I would like to find a woman who could love me, and make love with me despite the sexual limitations I endure from my cancer treatments.  Of course, if I got my big wish--cure for cancer--this wish would be unnecessary.  Would be, if. 

     But right now, I would sure be a lot happier if I could have romantic love again.

                              --by Michael LP, aka MLP
                              aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
                          Written on Friday, September 25, 2009 7:13pm PDT