Blindfolded, without sky- or land-
mark, no lightning-struck fir flagging

the pine break, no particular ark
of known stars—Little Dipper, Southern

Cross—the body, pressing on, no matter
how piano-wired, how absent of play

the mind’s straight-line intention, always
will circle; this—not stasis, not that I trusted

to rescue—why, lost to the woods, I was found
so near where I began

as compass point, as measure of all
direction, though I could recall

nothing, not even my own shadow
returned at the clearing, its field

of scattered needles, the unstitched
spires of pines, where I or the sun

first turned away.