Map/Quest

There is a line of boats, along the docks at the south end of my island. Houseboats, with potted plants and hammocks, bicycles and mail boxes, they lie there, steady through the rains, through the nights. I walk past them when the sun is out, in my incessant, futile attempts to tread my way to enlightenment. Their loosely hung lines writhing like giant entrails on deck, doesn't it seem they could simply abandon their moorings, take their dinner tables and residents, and escape into the world, into the ocean foreverland, into unknown adventure, without ever losing footing, losing the sense of home. Doesn't it seem they could be the snail, and carry their homes with them always?

Today I walked slowly, closing my eyes and turning my face into the light. The joggers disappeared, the school children and parents on leave, the Swedish air, as I imagined skyscrapers towering at the edges, the sounds of impatient cabs and the humidity of late August in a land far away, and I prepared for the lighter heart and easier smile such visions always invoke.

But no such relief was to come. I faltered in the imagined avenues. They tumbled and evaded my grasp; they shrugged at my longing and looked the other way. For a short moment, the New York City grid was no home, not the soft landing it always is. For a short moment, I imagined I did not belong there either. For a long moment after, I felt more homeless than ever.


. . .

I suppose the trouble
is I wish
you would be
the home I carried
with me
always

regardless the land
under my feet.