By Bart Edelman
If I confuse today with the future,
And my past is a photograph
I’ve simply forgotten to take,
Then what about the route ahead,
Where I’m traveling next—
One mountain on a relief map
I hang halfway across my chest,
Making the journey bearable,
Familiar, as though by request.
Surely a destination must follow;
Call it a point of reference, at least.
I don’t require more than this
And would be foolish to think
Such a place actually exists.
Just allow me a direction.
Set me on the only course
I can navigate these nights,
When sorrow’s slightest swerving,
Stops me steps short of tomorrow.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press), and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023 (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.
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