Perhaps every journey begins
by going down the staircase

or trawling through a passage
in your granny's house where

a door might lead to shadows
& ink stains, a fireside of charred

carbon. Folks often mistake
the soul for the spirit, and like the

key that falls to the sand, we
rise to the swarm but forget the

man. Or songs stitched in the sky
long before cities were erected and

signposts staked. The wind may be
unfaithful as light selects its aperture;

we may give praise to the wrong God,
and remember only what illuminates

the field, the glutinous parts of the map.
We scan the spread from the crest of

the earth as though the world were
merely the consequence of some cosmic

spillage, the mountains brittle before the
sun, the sea no more than water leaking

into space. But lately there is no telling
summer from silver, as islands sink and

fish gasp in the black hole of unseasonal
drought. What stories we may find

in our passage through imagining
are buried in dead men's chests or

saved by the moon like the face of
a stray goddess. Such that it comes as a

gentle surprise that the pages that leap
from certain books hint of something closer

to the skin, a mother's fingerprint, or a
bead of sweat that escapes a father's neck,

bent over the very same lines, sending
him places with wide-eyed wings.