Horizon Lines

Photo by David Morris

My longer trajectory is a trick of the light. I used to
take stock, mapping short-term and long-term plans
as if those disembodied articulations of desire were
apotropaic, would magically ward off chaos in five-
year chunks. Not so; not here. The landscape looks
real, but it’s only made real in a moment of contact:
clay under nails, a small bruise where my shin met
a low limb hard, respiration (mine, yours) fogging
the horizon ahead. Ever prepared I was, two maps
in hand, when a sudden gust turned them to kites
with no strings, floating, soaring up and over a low
ridge before they were lost to sight, like I am now.