Sometimes I wonder if
the world is as big as it seems.
Are these people I avoid on the subway
in the hallway
on staircases
in elevators
really strangers?
And I think of how the glass plate
of a perfect window
looks crisp and familiar
to a doomed bird,
And how an unseemly field
turns into a battleground
And how a single glance
changes a life
And how big a marble must
seem to an ant
And how sometimes you can drown
in a drop of water
running down a stranger's check
And maybe the whole world
is just a reflection
in some stranger
in the elevator's
eye.

Odysseus never understood why the gods were so intrigued by him. He was only one man in the folds of time, but there was something in him that glowed. He burned through the eyes, made them remember. Still, he prayed, they gave him storms and seductive ocean lyres to hold him down. They only wanted him to understand what he had in his center. But he was lost long before.

Twisting and turning
in your ship
fate won’t let you go