“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have.”
—Henry James
The first sentence
is a worn trail marker,
leaning where two paths divide.
I follow it.
Miles later,
it leads me across a stream
inside a story
I didn’t know I was walking.
A trail map fades.
Rain freckles its pages.
A route I crossed out
waits beneath the pencil’s ghost,
still pointing.
Nothing is wasted.
The dust of the trail
settles into my boots
with yesterday’s miles.
The ridge ahead
imagines tomorrow’s weather.
Both leave a mark
no stream of consciousness can fully wash away.
Inside the data centers,
machines map every switchback
without ever feeling thin air,
without the weight
of a tired friend
leaning on your shoulder.
Meanwhile,
we climb one more rise
though daylight is thinning.
The summit is still ahead—
a small ambition
lifting its face
against a crag of silence.
Still,
the peak borrows our footsteps
to reveal its paths.
The trails we abandoned,
the wrong turn,
the loose stone,
the single weary step,
becomes the way forward.
We wander.
We blister.
We wait for one another,
exploring new twists and turns
in our boundless quest
to rewrite the world.
Corney Press 