ANOTHER DAY TRIP: HONG KONG WITH EMIL WEST...DAY TRIP TOURS

ANOTHER DAY TRIP: HONG KONG

Was on another long lay over...
Going nowhere rather fast...
Sitting around this old, airport,
It all kind of left me bored.
Seeking the illusion of advance,
I jumped up onto a waiting bus...
Seeming to be headed...somewhere...
I hoped it was going downtown...
Once, I was out and free, free of the airport's crap...
I discovered that I was now on another Day Trip to Hong Kong.

The sights...the sounds...the smells of Hong Kong...
Washed all around me
There was the massing of all humanity here ...
The crowds, they swam, blasted, they barked at me...
And it just about then,
Then, that is where,
I had the vision...
A vision so clear...it seemed so real...
It swirled around, whispered in my ear,
I turned my head to look away...
Then, when I glanced back, it had gone away.

I wrote it off...just a tired mind playing some tricks,
Being truly tired and it had been a rough, long flight...
I wrote it off but...it still troubled me.

At first I select not take a look...
I closed all of my thought processes down...
But, up there on that far street corner,
I stopped, jumped off the bus,
Hit the ground still in motion,
I was back a foot upon the concreted ground...
So, I got to figuring, didn't have time to ponder...
It was time to take a gander,
It was time to do a walk-about
More or less, to chase my fancy...

Off I was to have a good look around...
A grand adventure with a terribly short, a limited time span...
A day trip, in fact...it became the grandest of adventures,
Up and down back street alleys I ran,
Rummaging about in vendor stalls...
Stopping by and eating at the seven-eleven store.
At the end of it all,
It was so hard to turn back around.
But, the last bus was leaving and customs needed clearing...
Hopping a flight now back to the States...
Home was still another twelve hours away.

- EMIL WEST