Random Acts of Poetry

Random Acts of Poetry

The Map

Your destination is the white blank,
the zero, the empty canvas
at the top of the world
to which every terminus points.

Your map is a mirror,
your own face in a photograph, a self-portrait
in pen and ink, a poem that rattles
stubbornly, for now, inside your skull.

Where you are going
there is no tea-stained map of paper,
no longitudinal grid,
or compass rose for reference.

No black cross to mark the treasure,
or dot or pinhole at the spot.
If it were that easy,
wouldn't everyone be a traveler?

You have heard about other routes,
marked with breadcrumbs, stones,
or yellow bricks -- paths that led to nowhere.
You read your map with intuition

and scrawl directions,
hoping that somewhere, behind you,
some sagacious voyager
traces the arc of your footprints.
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