I know what it means, to come to love all over again the very mistakes I also know, looking back, I might better have strayed clear of

I have seen how the earth erodes differently
from the way that trust does. Likewise,
I know what it means, to come to love
all over again the very mistakes I
also know, looking back, I might better have
strayed clear of. Two points make a line—but
so does one point, surely, when pulled at
once in two opposed directions: how
to turn away from what’s familiar, for
example, toward what isn’t

defines hope well enough, but can define,
too, despair… When I look around
at all the wood that’s drifted ashore, been
bleached clean, and stranded, I think
to be stranded must mean giving in
to whatever forces make of strandedness
over time such smooth-to-the-hand forms
of trophy as these before me now, each one

distinctive. There’s a light that can make
finding a thing look more than faintly
like falling across it—you must kneel,
make an offering. I threw my compass away
years ago. I have passed through that light.

[Carl Phillips {1959- } 'That It Might Save, Or Drown Them' from Wild is the Wind]