This sonnet, 109, seems very appropriate to me for someone who’s on the road a lot. From Shakespeare Sonnet-A-Day.

CIX.

O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign’d
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain’d,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

I find myself reassured by Shakespeare using the same rhyme-word twice in different forms – stain and stain’d. It seems fine. In fact, it seems done on purpose.

I was thinking I would like to make a poetry mix of sort for people at some point, but I wish there was a better way to do it. I could xerox them by hand, or email them as an attachment or as text, but I really wish there was a way to have poems on your IPod. Maybe it has to do with getting actors to read them out loud, recording them. But then I also wish that you could simultaneously see the lyrics on the screen as you listened.