Navigating by Stars

When you were fourteen, your father taught you
how to navigate by the stars,
to find your way when there was no sun or shadow,
to decipher those tiny lights and use them as maps.

It was, he said, an arcane skill, in an age of electronic,
but more reliable, and somehow more magical,
history breathed into eye and angle and your very soul.
You still have the instruments, carefully housed

the their wooden memory boxes,
and some nights you take them out and climb the quarry,
not to find your way, but to ground you, to remind you
that you are where you are called to be.

About this poem

Except for the emotion of it, there is precious little autobiography in this one.

The picture was taken behind my house in Vermont.

Be well. Travel wisely, whereever you are in your journey.

Tom