Route plans

 

Every day is a journey and the journey itself is home. ~ Matsuo Basho (1644-94).

Amwaj, Bahrain.

What you thought was home turned out just a path,

and what you took to be a journey, was home,

paid little attention to the maps and maths

and now you’ve no-one but yourself to blame

now that you’re so geographically doomed.

It’s not just a casual photograph

bleached out on a whim, pared to monochrome,

and surely not a thousand and a half

attempts at so called half draft of poems -

a whole heap of things that can’t be consumed.

Neither the doors nor the compass was yours

you let them possess you more than they should,

when you turned there were no wakes left, no shores -

just a diffuse, shadowless light. And driftwood.