My wife got mad at me for my terrible
sense of direction, so I up and right.
	—old dad joke

I go around the block, make two turns, and I’m lost again. 
Once I drove the babysitter home, got turned around 
on the way back and didn’t get to our place until 3 a.m., 
kept making the same wrong turn over and over, until finally 
I decided to go the other way, and there it was, a street 
I recognized, right by Walmart and McDonald’s. 
If I sat quietly, emptied my mind, would the world
open like a new road atlas? Could I follow the blue lines?
I got lost in the subway once, in some other borough 
and the map proved as unreadable as Linear A 
or hieroglyphics on a papyrus scroll. 
In the end I walked fourteen miles to a station I knew, 
and sank in exhaustion on the hard plastic bench. 
When I woke up, I was in Queens and then it was too late 
to call home. GPS might help, but mine always whispers 
in something like Gaelic, or shouts at me in German 
when I mess up: Ganz falsch!” I set out for the Midtown Tunnel, 
and there’s the green exit sign: Abandon all Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. 
I’ve gotten lost at my desk, wandering for hours in a forest 
of words, crossing a deep gorge on the bridge of one hair, 
afraid to look down, unwilling to ask the elves for directions home.
                        

to your house, 
a detour, and 
I end up in 
Indiana or India, 
or somewhere 
the clouds hang 
upside down, 
dangling above 
cliffs of glass. 

Why can’t they 
make these signs 
easier to read? 
I’ve turned off 
onto a dirt road, 
maybe a bike path 
or an ox trail. 

My GPS needs 
to recalculate, 
and I’m sure you’re 
anxious, with the 
hors d’oeuvres 
getting cold, 
the wine almost 
out of breath 
on the counter top. 

Don’t worry, I’ll 
ask directions 
of that man 
in the top hat. 
He looks as 
though he could 
find a port 
in any kind of storm.