Along the way there are signs, nothing
obvious, small things laid
as if randomly but reasonably along the way.

Which is the way forward, which
the way back to those first useless
instruments of direction?

I can see from where I stand the diving birds
of this inland waterway, small surface fish
boiling in the pre-sunset heat hunting
the hovering insects skittering the minor ripples

each moving toward a destination unlike mine
because my path is not destined,
although the one direction now is forward.

Miles of landscape, twigs, branches,
stones and flattened leafage point out
one way or another, the infinity of one location.

Ahead the countless amber caps of kelp
listing toward the shore on the horizon,
the limitless ocean passing over the many bones.