Poles

I asked the sky for directions.

While things among things connected to things turned

Around my eye, one star out of the myriad gave answer.

I walked away from the glim star again as far as I could.

Was I lost? Maybe. I asked the sky again for directions.

The patterns of things were alien and still turning.

An empty space this time,

Black star of the opposite extreme gave answer.

I walked away from the black star and in sunrise realized

That I was never anywhere other than where I should be,

Though there were those might tell me I did not belong.

That was my moment to realize

I am my own embodied map,

Settled now between the two fixed stars,

The brilliant and the black,

Moving with all the gamut of moving things,

Rooted in no deeper soil than the wind regularly shifts,

Unless rooted so deeply

That my bare feet penetrate soil, bedrock and aquifer,

Descend through moving plates,

Through slow gimbal of lava currents

To an impossible anchor,

The dense liquescence of innermost Earth.

In other words, I am either everywhere or in no particular place.

These are both home.