Traveling Show

The roving Traveling Shows of the 13^th Century is the modern equivalent of the television set.

Dozens, perhaps thousands of Traveling Shows performed throughout medieval Europe with groups of minstrels. They would entertain with song, dance and theatrics.

The minstrel bards would sing and tell tales of faraway or imaginary places, events and legends. They were the storytellers who knew how to entertain. 

The minstrels would compose the lyrics, or use another’s tune, and spin a story that would captivate the crowd with their words and voice. The minstrel was a performer who would amuse his lord with music and song.

Depending on its size, the Traveling Show would have several acts or could be just a single performer who wanders from town to town- an entire show in one.

The streets of Renaissance Europe would be filled with these street musicians and entertainers both day and night. But by 1700, minstrels in Europe became extinct.

Today, the Traveling Show is found in the entertainment circuit of most traveling celebrities, comedians, actors and stage performers. Their spirit is also found in today’s street musicians who entertain on the street corner or park bench.

The Traveling Show is also the scene of life that passes by in one’s life. The entertainers are the fancy dancers and those in search of rainbows.

At 16, I started writing poetry. Over that decade, and more than 600 poems later, the poems became my lifeline to the past and beacon to the future.

I wrote about growing up and the lives of the people around me as I transitioned through high school, college and the real world.

The poems carried an unwitting theme, or string of themes, that seem to bind the decades together into a story of more than just myself.

Follow the words that weave around those themes as people come in and out of my life. Those same words followed me for decades.

Everyone has their own traveling show. As we interact with the people we meet, their influences on our lives shape the way we grow and how we perform.

The people in these poems lived, and died, with their own traveling shows as they tried to reach for their own rainbows. Some never did finish that journey.

Through their eyes, I wrote about their travels through life. Through my eyes, I wrote about my own travels.

Each poem is written as it occurred, in original form day by day. Each is a slice of life and chapter on it own. The poems foretold my story as it unfolded.

By age 30, the words in my poems seem to have told my story. Now, decades later, I can read them again and remember how I got to my destination today.

I was able to tell my own minstrel story.

I’m only a poem.

A poem I’m meant to be.

And as a poem

I’m the story of me.

Dedicated to Keli, Beth, Sherry, Roxanna, Kaye and all of the fancy dancers who created this story of me.

Traveling Show

Traveling on a rainbow
In hopes to reach the sun.
A piece of sky, piece of dream.
Angels across the heaven.

Treading the waters by the riverside.
Collecting flowers that grow nearby.
The wind seems to sweep me away.
Blowing endlessly past my eyes.

Am I a player in the traveling show
To amuse the audience for awhile?\
Am I the seeker who lost his way\
Paying for the people to smile?\

For nickels and dimes I make my living
To be spent in around about way.
Behind it a gray wall of smoke I stand
To face the world each day. 

When I look for some direction
Only the flame dances before my eyes.
And it leads me to keep wondering
If the river is just a bit too wide.

Have I’ve been changing,

Rearranging,

All of my world to see?

Have the I lived in the memories

Of what I’m supposed to be?

And I’m a player in a traveling show
That entertains the simple souls?
Am I the seeker who lost his way?
A stranger who all never know.

#463 November 20,1974