A poem for those who wonder.

The first time

I met Doubt I learned

he is nothing

like an overstuffed suitcase

too heavy to drag, something

you could abandon 

once you were through with it 

at the carousel.

Doubt was flyover country,

land you never cared to look

that closely at until you’d stumbled,

alone and mapless, off the tarmac into 

its wilds.

No cartographer

could map its hills or trace the yearning

oxbows of its rivers, count

the bones in its mountains’ 

spine. I couldn't weigh the dust

in its rain-shadowed deserts. 

The rocks in those valleys bruised 

the arches of my feet, hitchhiked 

cross-country in my shoes.

Its gravity spun my compass until

the needle no longer found North, always 

pointing backwards to the place I hoped

to never return. 

Like a city, Doubt's skies were starless,

black, with no beacon to show

how far I'd come,

how far I'd yet to go.  

The only way to travel there was

to crawl, nose dragging

in dirt, following the footfalls

of something just out of sight.