I’d forgotten how well my body remembers descending
its reservoir of map turns down empty streets.

There is no fixing the broken roads phantoms parade through the camouflage.
There is no tempering the taciturn ode to the odd returning.

It wouldn’t resemble a familiar red beacon
or a sinewy splinter in the hood of your wooden urn.

It can’t answer.
It’s lost in the trees.

I’ve seen the rivers rewinding east and west.
It can’t remind me of this aroma or that refrain.

It turns its madcap lid on my cup of mud.
Its broken braid can’t be undone.

Underplaying the cosmic groove of noticing
the astral train through the shadows of its locomotion.

Derailing the unveiling was on the drawing board for hours
and for hours remembering the old ways.