The Map in Your Hip Pocket
I have always preferred maps that fit in a pocket.
Atlases are impressive.
They know everything.
Rivers.
Mountains.
Borders.
Distances.
But when you are standing at a fork in the road
none of that matters.
What matters is the next step.
Perhaps that is why Captain Coddiwompler carries a map in his hip pocket.
Not an atlas.
Just enough wisdom
to continue.
The poems in Poems of Captain Coddiwompler are often mistaken for travel poems.
They are not.
They are navigation poems.
Maps appear.
Railway tracks appear.
Mountain trails appear.
Notebooks appear.
Again and again.
Not because the destination is important.
Because the act of finding one’s way is.
Railway tracks promise certainty.
You know exactly where they lead.
A wandering path promises nothing.
Yet that is where discovery lives.
The Himalayas taught me this.
The mountain never tells you what lies beyond the next bend.
You walk anyway.
Life works the same way.
We are all navigating uncertain terrain.
Memory.
Love.
Loss.
Friendship.
Ageing.
Hope.
No atlas exists for these things.
Only rough sketches.
Brittle yellow notes.
Half-forgotten directions.
The map in your hip pocket.
Perhaps that is why I like the word coddiwomple.
To travel purposefully toward an unknown destination.
It sounds absurd.
Until one realizes that most meaningful journeys are exactly that.
The task is not to arrive.
The task is to continue.
To tack onwards.
