Map

How do you leave?
Not a place
But an orientation
A kind of tattered map that has known your hands
And traveled with you so many years
You don’t quite remember who you were
Before it also became a part of you
Guiding and in some ways holding you up
As if you would be lost without it
Though rivers had been erased
Landscapes uncrossable
Drawn over
Faded like dull eyes
Still
You always knew there was much more terrain to explore
So why did it so often feel unpassable
In spite of our four strong legs
A shared desire to know all the valleys and peaks
And quiet secret rivulets
Did we ever know how to read the map?
Were we peering over the same map from different sides-
Trying to find each other from distant ends
To meet somewhere
In a place we never remembered the coordinates of
Though we held the same map in our longing fingers?
Maybe it was not enough endurance
Or that I may have sometimes walked too fast
Forgot my way
And our why
Needed reassurance that I wasn’t traveling alone
Running through miraculous landscapes
Merely snapping freeze frames
Rather than being able to see that all along
Even in the chasms
You were there
And you, too, had many reasons why you couldn’t find me
A miraculous blur on the topography
Aurora borealis
A mirage which also held quenching bounty, solace
And the rest of you

(Main image above by Jenny Wonderling. Gardiner, NY)

Down by the river, Gardiner, NY. Image by Jenny Wonderling