It occurred to me one day that the word “directions” has multiple meanings, meaning, to me, it was fair game to put it on my mental carousel. Or did it go into my mental casserole?
Either way, I chose both ways to study the word. I first pictured tall antennas on homes or huge dishes for picking up faint micro pulses emanating from the farthest stretch of the scientific wildest imaginations as another peers into the digital readout of their government telescope. These are infinitely long energies traveling in only one direction.
On the other side of earth are folks getting their directions from a box. Each is directed how to open the package and how to prepare its contents. We will never know who followed the directions to the letter.
Our earth travels to unknown places as we do while commuting to our kitchen from the bedroom and then to our job and to our laptop or bus, train or car.
Our younger students learn to follow directions from either their teachers or the trees or both. Nature as some are surely aware, whispers her directions and some can hang on to them as surely as earrings hang onto ears.
Directions are benevolent or benignly conveyed with freedom to diverge. Then there are directions that emanate from a piccolo and blast a hole of compliance.
I leave you at this juncture to read my words “at a crossroad of directions.”
Long beats of directions
With rhythms of deep space—
Nanosecond rhythms
As microcosms keep apace.
Uncertain who's behind the curtain?
Wild rhythms of deep space;
Dire directions in a long race.
To my heart of gossamer lace,
Sweep galactic hands of grace.
Uncertain who's behind the curtain?
Asteroids kept in absent time:
mitochondria within a fragile vase.
A coterie of far-flung batteries
Slave to their soul's long face.
Uncertain who's behind the curtain?
Followed directions; shelf-life stamped
Posted signs of a puffed up limit
Minds snap to rapt attention
Directions directed to a location.
Who's behind the curtain?
Uncertain times right out the gate
History's map unfolds too late
Directions in backwards gait
Jars of love spill out cracks of hate.
Who's behind the curtain?
Boulders build boundless beauty.
In directions some align as a duty.
Neither one sounds an alarm
To Newtonian gravitational harm.
Who directs behind a curtain?
A gesture and a brochure overrules
A previously benevolent intention
As directions make souls tools
To follow who's behind the curtain.
June 26, 2016