"Careful consideration of distances,"
considers the book-weary man
who watches every step
yet travels at night
so as to humanize destinations.

He fears miles that become 
explanations,  junctions pronunciations,
switchbacks & detours deceptions 
of largesse & leisure,
each receding scene
a catastrophe of inattention.

The road dictates
often not by the chosen path
a certain haphazard mystery
no one understands better than he.
The road rushes up into his throat,
embarrasses him with its purpose.

You knew he was a dangerous man,
to be administered only 
memory-disrupting,  suffocating kisses.

When moonlight upon your bare arm
illuminated places he never reached
you watched him remember he was lost
& yield to your less plotted pace.

Somewhere ahead, your daughter,  
who never knew his youth,
will venture beyond nearby cat-rat rhymes
knowing nothing of his maps.

Strike out for her own distant metaphors 
of unwise planetary motions 
& moonlights & moonlights 
of lover-intentions,

And one day read aloud dark rhymes 
he cast over your days with him,
& places he knew were abyss,
& rewrite her journal of you again.