Small Guide for the Modern Pilgrim

Take a selfie before you leave and let
your mobile phone for what it is. Now you’re alone

Accessible to yourself. Your own battery needs to be charged.
You fall in the footsteps of those who went before you and yet

this tour feels like new. Travel light-footed. A map your guide
on which the outline of a pigeon in full flight marks the way.

Be recognizable by your luggage, which is hardly any, most of it
Carry yourself in your head and heart, that old sculpture garden. Add birds

that sit on wires like a score. Decipher
the song composed for you. Thread the rings onto your cord.

After days across the fields, approach your destination.
The distance slowly lets you go of the swaying landscape.

Take another selfie when you get home. Spot the differences.
You’ve come this far.

Frouke Arns
froukearns.nl