Cartography of Thistledown

We walk the hayfield with our pockets turned out, seed-fuzz lifting like small weather reports. Each breath is a compass, a soft insistence that the day is moving without a map.

In the fence wires the wind rehearses its vowels, a long thin music that ignores our names. Thistledown drifts toward a hollow in the oaks, as if the air knows where the river used to be.

We spread the feathers on the hood of the truck, trace the currents with a fingertip of dust. What we call memory is just a settling— pale geography held in the corners of light.

By evening the field is a dark page, lanterns of dew holding still the last direction. We fold the day into our sleeves and go, leaving the map to the quiet, to the stars.