North
Get here.
It’s the only place I know.
Start in the hallway
go down past the mirror
and the little hutch
with the silver and china
turn left at the dining room
table and on thru the kitchen
and out the back door where you
smoked weed for the first time
behind the little green shed
and further even, out past
the fence and down Willow Lane
and into the woods behind
the subdivision and then
down to the creek—
pure wilderness—
and then Route One and 95
North and South, that corridor
on which you’ll spend
a great chunk of your life
and down to the Potomac
and out to the Bay
and then into Maryland
to get some soft-shelled crabs
that are poured from a bushel
a big steaming pile in the middle
of a picnic table and then all
the way out to the Atlantic
where you can catch the winds
that will pull you North
You never even thought
of the North, not in any
real way, only when Mr. O’Neil
told you about living in Boston
before Earth Science in 9th grade.
One day he came to class
and put his head down
on the table and told you
to do whatever you wanted
so long as you were quiet.
That’s all you knew about Boston.
That’s all there was to know.
Who knew that you’d drift even further
North, up past Massachusetts
and wind up in NH
writing at the end of a long day
at the end of a long semester
with a group of students who
don’t even know about paper maps?
You couldn’t have known
no one ever knows
that’s why I’m giving
you directions now
even though it’s
already too late.
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