Alan Birkelbach: New and Selected Poems

Direction

-47Direction Everyone needs a good compass. The old people understood it: “Align those stones so the stars have a voice in our lives. Drop them in place then count the days of winter, That direction will be East and that way West and that way South and that way ....” But this is bigger than a North Pole thing, or lodestone, or magnet; it’s a pulling that urges our blood. Remember how whenever Mama would set the watering can down the spout would always point a certain way, as if she knew which way the rain clouds were coming from? When you play cards you and your partner should line up with the bathtub. It’s the way the luck runs—downstream and flowing; stand alongside it, reach out, touch it, taste it. Where have all the hood ornaments gone, the metal faces, the wings, the rockets those prows that arrowed us down the road, those perfect chrome and amber things that even if you were lost would declare “This way is the best way, straight ahead?” Everyone needs a figurehead, a thing that leads you through the stinging, blinding water, some unshakable needle that allows you to be Babe Ruth, that lets you point your bat and say “There. Up there. I am going to hit it there.” ...