Compass

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Today in the taxi I drove for ten hours. I was in all five boroughs and New Jersey and got not one tip.

Once there were factories and foundries across from railroad trestles. You could see them beyond the pink gauze of the cherry blossoms and their white edges that formed the skyline. They smelled of incarnadine muscle, the folks who toiled there. On the streets were patterns of maps, the peoples’ memories that overlapped, and became each other like a maze. Private and public warrens. People loved the idea of the city from their marrow.

Someone said ideas are like mice. You don’t know where they came from or when they’ll come again. If I were a mouse I would make circles, gnaw on wood, and pause only when I smelled bread.