I stayed home from work today because I was up all night.
Here’s why.
Dead Reckoning
1
You say, can I please live here?
The first word you think of
when you sit down to write is always “left” –
as in left turn, left behind, left over, left hand.
You start over there and move over here
but when you start again it’s another start
from just where you were last time.
Just once you want to stay where you end up.
2
Dead reckoning is
the art of predicting where you will end up
if you keep doing what you are doing.
It does not take into account
current or drift.
3
There are rare times when you end up
somewhere luminous.
I talked for an hour last night with a boulder
that rose from the roadside dark on the way home,
as gray as if lit from within.
The hump of granite said
it preferred to remain still for fear
of learning more than it could handle.
Before I turned away
I kissed it and forgot myself.
4
Legend has it that Death will find you
even if you run to another city.
Death was thinking you were supposed to end up
in that other city anyway. Death
moves on its accustomed course, you move
on your accustomed course, the edges of the world
converge at the vanishing point.
5
Go out to find your bones.
Fall upon the rocks on the coast.
Ask one of them what it’s like on the other side.
You will learn that they were left behind
when the world split and the far coast moved away from them.
You will dive in and struggle forward, promising
to return with news.
There is something waiting out there, you know.
It waits unsure of how the two of you ended up
so distant from where you were supposed to be,
from where you were supposed to stay.
