It is a strange thing, brass, half compass, half sextant.
No one in the antique shop knows exactly what it is.
A fascination, surely an instrument of navigation,
it belongs on the deck of wooden ships,
not here in the byways of a small town in a small state.
It has made its own journey, certainly.
Was it stolen, lost, moved?
Did it come here of its own intention,
or is it the debris of a life come undone?
Your mind is full of questions
and there is no one to answer.
You sigh. Its polished brass curves sing to you
and it is a sad song, a mournful song of lostness,
of too much time spent floundering in a sea
far more kind than you deserved, for you survived
as you were cast from wave to wave,
from foreign land to foreign land, and in the end
it was grace that brought you here, not navigation.
Time and currents and wind, conspired to bring you home
when you could not find the way yourself.