Navigator

Let’s say I’m Captain Cook, setting sail to drift until currents push me into a certain lane, certain highway with its humpbacked traffic bobbing along. My young aren’t strapped in the back flinging Cheerios into the crevices like a game of darts but moored in the house with my patient wife so I can seek my destiny here— And I have no destination, not the Friendly Center or aquarium—I journey only to find a usable route. I’m stewing the bones a fourth time to leach any last savor for my broth— not gumming pirate birthday cake with seafoam-colored frosting, nor placing my order at the drive-thru (no, not a Frosty, not a McRib)— Place-names are still to be scrawled, new-minted to mark this passage, its weather and bits of luck. The usable route’s a velvet highway I’ll trace to parchment—a new day, a new world, not the GPS lady recalculating— These words held in my mouth, these words a way to inscribe we are not lost in a vast expanse of lostness.