Castaway

Diego Delso, "Geysers of Tatio, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile," 2016

My footprints have been swept clean away
by the wind. Do I know where I am? Yes,
I know. I am here. I am lost. And the sun
is high in its arc, its shadows cast black as
pips on white dice, the dice I tossed when
I set forth, Audaces fortuna iuvat. Mouth
as dry as the scree on this downslope. I
wonder, now, if Virgil made a bleak joke
in giving those words to a man who loses
and dies. We all die. In dying, lose touch.
The talus slope underfoot shifts, slides—
and I lose touch with where, how I began.