If you’re lost enough, then the experience of now
is your guide to what comes next.
—William Stafford
Thank god, if that’s who’s to thank,
for this open territory called lost.
Found right now would mean
everything’s precisely the way
it’s apparently supposed to be. I’ve
been there! And I know you were
watching me watching my every
treacherous step, dragging along
that narrow sledge of expectations,
because I happened to see you, too—
the chafing around your blue-white
wrists, your neck, the disjointed gaze
in your conversation, those nerves
you couldn’t seem to push aside
too often—there, where questions came
as tepid waves and our answers met
with all those nodding heads. I’m sorry
I didn’t see to take your trembling hand.
Should I have felt it reaching when I
slipped forever from that room? Oh,
I was in such a rush to get myself lost,
with this just luckily coming next.
And now, how about you?
Yes, what about you?
—first published in Lost Enough (Finishing Line Press, 2007)
D. R. James
D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press).
https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage