Night Directions For The Lost

Turn left when you pass the frog 
barking under the pumphouse
and follow alongside the brown bats 
dipping low above the pond.
Since all is near-invisible you can name everything.
We will let you give words to the dark.
Call back your memories,
the kasbah in Casablanca,
the fragrant alleys behind the main
where the hookers shot dreams into their arms.
The road that led to where it ended.
Call this a thistleseed, call that a fence.
Call it all the wheel of the world.
Call it the whispering pasture under your feet.
And that noise like a marble falling down stairs,
call it the owl celebrating the mouse it swallowed,
call your heart alive and pounding,
call yourself a human being who sings in the shadows.
Name the animals, name the plants, name yourself,
and keep on going until you can call it paradise.



~ Brian Brett