Directional

Slightly east of nowhere
he unpacked his loose vowels

then walked straight away
up a long, graveled slope.

Winds covered them.

The mountain kept him.

Time breathed as time does.

Suns and moons passed like water.

Then the woman arrived with

her shovels and brushes,

exposing missing vowels

to air and sounds.

She dropped them in boxes,

as if neatness could hold them.

One day they fell off

when her bike hit a stone

a little west of somewhere.

Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for 50 years. He's the author of five full-length collections and six chapbooks. His latest collection, Something To Be, is published by Pski's Porch Publishing. His latest novel, A Book of Lost Songs, is due out in March from Histria Books. He's fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco, where he points out pretty things.