there were moments
spread across decades
when I thought the path was lost
or maybe just imagined from the outset
though hope remained ever-present
and I kept taking single steps
(directionless steps better than no steps at all)

looking everywhere
but finding nothing resembling an idyllic destination
that I imagined I would discover
along the trail
just another landscape
littered with empty bottles
photographs and half-filled pages of scribbling
cigarette butts and broken guitar strings
detritus, evidence of
amusing myself to death

moving forward in space, in time
a drifting woolgatherer
feeling aimless but somehow correct
with each decision

sometimes trusting the moon as my guide
or lines from books or songs
sometimes stumbling
sometimes falling
but always trusting that I felt a pull

and then…

that pull became real
though I couldn’t know it at the time
a simple beginning
mostly words that flowed like an undammed river
of Vonnegut and Eliot
of music and bad jokes
and talking in your sleep

I could never have guessed
sitting states away in a gentle snowfall
and yet somehow I knew
that I had found my signal fire
the flare that could lead me
if not home
then where I was supposed to be

and it was then that I discovered
that there is a difference
between feeling happy
and being distracted from sadness