[From 03?]

A place from which to start is where one belongs.
To start without at once belonging to the place
from which one started is to be lost: don’t go there.
Whereas to be lost is to be free to start from anywhere
So that every place becomes the center of a circumference
Even if this circumference amounts to a Mercator projection
Of lines of latitude lightly drafted by electronic tracery
Or the sparkling of holiday fireworks in the sky, smoke trails
That drop their sundry cinders into ocean.

To be scattered is to be parted from the homeland
But not lost. To be oriented continually toward the place
From where one imagined one had begun or arrived,
And from a great distance, or from a tower sunk in mud,
Which in the summer is cracked to fields of hexagonal plates,
hard enough to write upon with a branch pruned to a stylus
from a tree not local to the region, a tree one hears about

Around which sit followers, shepherds enjoying the thin shade,
where the meeting begins innocuously enough, a discussion of weather,
A forecast by one that shades into meanings more ominous
Than anyone had ever intended, words that exhort
Everyone to purify the temple with sword or fire -- yet innocent
Bystanders swore they’d gathered to talk about the price
Of commodities in cowry-shells. Here, one spreads his hand,
And shows one. A delicate ruddy pink smears its ridges

but its core is brown as terra-cotta, like bricks that spiral
Into towers with eroded steps, which can be climbed now,
Albeit with some difficulty, especially when balancing a camera
With a tripod attached, to steady the view -- panoramic, desolate,
trick-mirror mirage of sand reflecting sky, the sky-gods
with their obsidian backs turned from the blast patterns.