The Good Compass

Getting lost in the white woods
Is as natural as sleep
The TV’s speech about injured animals
Spaying pigs, pregnant chameleons, sick old pit-bulls with trembling legs,
Hear me!
It spreads like black pigment into white gouache
And the hobbled dray-horse pulls a wagonload of
Raw and weeping wood, fragrant,
Along the rutted snow-road

The long walk
Along these ruts
Where my eye picks out houses in the landscape
And my own maps appear amid the scrawls
Where I aim my camera at the stars
As dawn’s blinking, yawning light
Crowns a ginko tree
Of gold so bright it heals a little
Of the cut I gave myself getting out of bed

But despite the earliness of the hour
We make it back to the road
Past houses full of doors
Past driveways full of sneaky hollows
Past trees with deep roots and shaky branches
Reaching up to tickle the belly of the clouds
Past church-bells of wind caught in the icicles
Past snags of lambswool stuck up on the sharp blue sky
Rich smell of lanolin and sap and snow
This pause is a cool liminal violet:
Hush.
There is a moment, here, of peace,
There is comfort in a good sense of direction