a disenchantment of nearsightedness

We searched
each other.
Diving in
with our whole soul,
unafraid of the brackish waters,
darkness, mirth or depth
of each other's eyes

Seeking what we had
lost, once had, where did
we put it, over there, outside,
ourselves, and with the things
that keep us
apart,

Spinning wheels in alternating
rotations, going nowhere fast,
or beating our chests like hearts
and pinching nerves to make a
sound come out...

Oh No.
There were so many ways to say,
I see where you are going,
you are getting smaller
as you travel
away.


Painting by Lionel Constable c. between 1849-55, Yale Center for British Art [Public domain].

The hardest directions are the ones we follow

Take a left, or a right?
                          Go West-toward the ocean.
So, left or right?
                          Where are you now?
I'm in your neck of the woods.
                            I think you have gone too far.
Left or right?
                            Straight-toward the ocean.
I've come around the bend.
                            Drive-thru to the dead end.
Are there any land marks? I am lost...
                            If you keep going, you will find it.




Painting by Michael Zeno Diemer (1867-1939), Pera Museum [Public domain].

Relief Map

Maps help
with plot lines
direction and depth-
if the spacing is accurate-
to scale, even the unknowns
should be measured accordingly.

A guide
shows the popular points
of interest to some obscuring
the curvature of the surface to
others topography via metonymy
giving a greater gist of breadth with
markers that scratch the surface

As smells
are anything but incidental
like streams too insignificant to note
but make dead ends and detours
from the way it was
to the way we get to Be
finding from A point

You are Here
and Now
you know
Where you've been
topographically alleviated
From
lost in place.




Image By Batholith, Mt. Fuji (Wikimedia Commons) Batholith (Wikipedia) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Walking the waterline

A single trail
                    of footsteps in the sand
or snow
                                                         mark where you have been
                                                                                                       not where you are needing to go
the right way
                         left you all alone
                                                  to make your own impression
                                                                                                       stamping your day
while it lasts
                         before erosion, corrosion
                                                                  degeneration, erasure, noting you were never there

walking backward, the footsteps don't fit
   
                                                               the gait was moved, the way worn smooth
we rely on these directions
                                            safety in nonzero numbers

                                                                                       go figure, follow the instructions,
tearing along the dotted line,
                                             racing by
                                                             fixed on the finish
 
                                                                                          waiting in line
standing in someone else's shoes
                                                             you lose
                                                                               your stride, taken by the tide.



Image By Probably P.S. Krøyer, 1893 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

A crappy map is a happy map

A map is handy
for some...
Still-just rendering space
this here: that there
(imagining is not knowing beyond
what is not seen).

This world is flat,
trapped in a map,
cornered in labels and confined in lines,
open to borders-crossing...
Still-it plans
for speculation.

I drew a map,
of no place I know-
but discovered it anyway,
and I know
my way around this place
of space, like the back of my red hand

measured by my means, not in factors of feet
walking the picket. I had to draw it before I saw
it, a map of me in this place, no free-handed trace
left to write what else
could not fit-
why did I quit?

I'm at the edge of the world.
Peering over, dripping down,
chilling off,  the trail simply stopped
mid-sentence, where the directions
should have shown, I should have known
without                           trespassing past the limits of Doubt.



Image By http://www.geographicus.com/mm5/cartographers/schoolgirl.txt [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, c. 1810 described as schoolgirl whimsical Hartshorn map of Newfoundland.