Navigator

Let’s say I’m Captain Cook, setting sail to drift

until currents push me

into a certain lane, certain highway

with its humpbacked traffic bobbing along.

My young aren’t strapped in the back

flinging Cheerios into the crevices like a game of darts

but moored in the house with my patient wife

so I can seek my destiny here—

And I have no destination, not the Friendly Center

or aquarium—I journey only

to find a usable route.

I’m stewing the bones a fourth time

to leach any last savor for my

broth—

not gumming pirate birthday cake

with seafoam-colored frosting, nor

placing my order at the drive-thru

(no, not a Frosty, not a McRib)—

Place-names are still to be scrawled,

new-minted to mark

this passage, its weather and bits of luck.

The usable route’s a velvet highway I’ll trace

to parchment—a new day, a new world,

not the GPS lady recalculating—

These words held in my mouth,

these words a way to inscribe we are not lost

in a vast expanse of lostness.

Source: Hundred-Year Wave (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016)