the platform


Embedded in your phone 
or in the cloud 
or glowing in the dash
of your car 
as you navigate the night 
is a platform 
that displaces where you are, 
directions to your destination, 
and the way back again.

Take off your hat.
Look at the label.
Look at the evening sky.
Like the Star the App 
provides North but also more: 
time of day, sunrise and sunset, 
and when the moon 
will once again cross the dark 
lake in a birch bark canoe. 

Have you ever 
waited so long 
for your car to appear
that when you awoke now 
and then had become 
a single place,
a single word?

Like calipers had closed 
lightly on your temples, 
then opened, and something inside 
had been measured?

The Twentieth Century Limited 
flashes past 
in the opposite direction.​