The Directionless Whole

Down below the old homestead I slip and fall - rare enough - and slide down Harvey Road a good twenty feet or so. The dog comes over to check but moves on quickly. We're all okay, despite so much evidence to the contrary. Rain and more rain and yet cold enough on the gravel that it turns to ice at 4 a.m. Deepening a kind of going down? Or going down a kind of opening? Well, kisses where they matter most, let's say that. Sometimes it seems I've been laying in snowbanks for lifetimes, staring up into the sky, blinking through tears or whatever watery trickle attends those crippled in love. Be my unshakable walking stick, be my naked crutch! Whiskey helps, or helped, and also meeting women I wasn't supposed to meet, one or two of whom brought their own bottle and sang their own sad songs. There is always a hairpin turn ahead, one that we need to take slowly, and always someone who will tell us a story about what happens to those who don't. I spent many years waiting on stars, those blistery symbols of the interior lantern, and for what? Travel is relative - east and west contingent inside the directionless whole - and crows will tear any map to pieces, no matter how badly you think you need it. We're not lost, we're home. We're not fallen, we're floating. You'll see. After all, you were the one who lifted me.