You cannot learn paths
by incremental reading alone –
at least not the paths that change
before maps can be born – spaced
repetition doesn’t work in the woods
and can’t account for circles,
for walking in circles. In Sidmouth
one year we both danced a six-time
Breton dance that wasn’t altogether
a circle but still didn’t end or begin
in anything but an empty hand –
an un-ouroboros, a snake that has freed
its own tail and is lost. When, shitfaced,
I couldn’t find my way back and pitched
an invisible tent in the red lee
of Salcombe Hill, the mapless spiral
sea apportioned blame percussively,
and according to the exponential nature
of forgetting.
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