Today's poem is by Alice Templeton

Magnetic North
       

1.
Here is my compass         my parting gift

Flattened pennies         half a heart         would do
but this is my chosen pact:         point of reference

place of convergence         no one's destination
Agree with me         This is an urge we will honor

the casual yearning toward north         orienting us
until the day our world turns in its vast sleep

reversing the ordinary poles

2.
Even standing still         we dwell in countless spaces

I mark my place on the street         squaring up to gutters
tuning my breath to the broken drum of traffic

I fix myself in time         by jobs or songs
by the length of winters         with or without

the chafe of love         And gazing down from the bluff
I judge my foothold by the river's crazy logic

my likeness buoyed on the impish surface         sunk
in a single swirling eye         Where am I?

3.
Where do I meet you if you or I get lost

caught in a turnstile         confused by the sting
of volts and barbs at the manmade borders?

Walk the face of this earth         gouged by machines
that lumber across it         ripping deliberate wounds

and you will come to a rift that stops you short . . .

4.
The practical map is marked by "true" north

the world in neat degrees         latitudes and longitudes
pinned to the ends of the earth's axes         packaged

parcels of angular blue and green         drawn
from high above         A different path         oblique

and strange         takes as its direction the pull and play
of magnetic north         Moored loosely to nowhere

it drifts imperceptibly in our time         creeping
toward cataclysm         minutes or millennia from now

salvation or doom         turning the earth on its head
and the charts inside out

5.
I want no maps

no prophecies         just this compass to remind me:
This is a force that keeps us         ever tremulous

always found         With every turn the needle
quivers northward         despite a worried hand

and designs that warp the land         Drawn to imbalance
into another step         we make our way by fevers

and gesture         Feel us lean         straining the vain
boundaries of "true" north         our senses bent

to the call of our singular place and time         pulled
by this gently moored desire         to know for ourselves

where we are         and how         amid such damage
the earth's body still guides our own

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Copyright © 2024 Alice Templeton All rights reserved
from The Infinite Field
Sixteen Rivers Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission