Compass and Clock. David Sanders

       The Alternates

      for Margaret Neill

      Faced with going home again,

      where you grew up and all of that,

      you take the normal route, a road

      connecting town with county, one

      in which a set of simple turns

      turns down your own gravel drive.

      They don’t occur to you—the alternate

      ways you’d sometimes walk—pastures,

      farmers’ woods, really not much

      more than seasonal display.

      But at the time they drove you down

      into their thick. You came out

      the other side, nearer to town,

      replaced by someone who saw more

      than you had seen going in:

      yourself, of course, a half an hour,

      an hour, older.

      They seemed amused,

      the few villagers you saw,

      when they said, as in my case,

      “David, what brings you to town?”

      Remember how you walked among them

      as if with news they’d not yet learned?

      Maybe they’d known all along,

      patient while your knowledge, light

      at first, grew large—a weight you wore,