Sometimes
you are hauled backward
before you can
move forward; you get on a plane in the dark
in Nashville
and head south to Atlanta before touching down
in Milwaukee
where someone you love waits in the sleeting rain
to drive you back
and pour you into a warm, flightless
bed.
Sometimes
the moon draws you back
like a half smile,
a wave helpless against a tide of something deeper
than you can fathom;
you just catch sight of land when Lake Michigan’s icy fingers drag you
coughing, gasping,
half-drowned into the past, the future laid out on the pebbled shore
like a table set for someone
who is not you.
Sometime, maybe,
the path worn by the incessant argument between
then and now,
between what you squint to see and what you’ve got,
will give way –
and the ragged rasp of back and forth, back and forth,
forth and back,
will stop – and you’ll be delivered like a newborn,
one last push
will show you into the world you never saw coming
despite
all of the maps you drew.
Halfway North 