How, even if you broke an oath—slandered your god
in the long summer months, when friends were generous
and a winking man in a linen shirt bought breakfast—
you, taking what you could from one man’s ice chest,
another’s burgeoning walnut groves, a lady’s purse
left open on her chair (she’d gone to check her lips)—
how you’d be welcomed into unexpected corridors:
manifold, the curves and dimples in the service road,
which—if you waited—had this way of evening out.
Take nothing with you now. Distrust that atlas.
You tried to be all things to others, too. It didn’t work.
The byways narrowed. Soft shoulders caved. You can’t
expect a rescue from such an ingress all the time.
Emergency service ends. You cross the county line.