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Imprint
Wherever we are, there’s always someone further north.
Only at the pole would a compass twirl round, seek
magnetic certainty.
Wherever we are on this spinning hemisphere
Polaris tracks our staggering steps. She’s pinned
to the firmament; a support.
Wherever we are, north is a state of mind
with no slack: earth’s stitches taken in,
the top grafted off.
Wherever we are, a scanner would suspect
our identity the way a stick of rock displays
its origin.
Wherever we are, slipped loose like homing pigeons,
there is a path north. Something keeps tugging
that invisible thread.