Two Travelers

Two Travelers

I am convinced that

there are two types of travelers.

There are those who embrace maps, with their

squirming blue forms of lakes

and the clustering splotches of cities.

These travelers find a sort of

security in the whispers from their atlases.

They crave comfort and a map’s false confidence

while ambling along an unfamiliar highway or road.

The other type of traveler is eternally lost,

though not trying to be found,

turning down whichever trail seems to beckon.

A honed sense of direction is not necessarily theirs,

but only a sense of self,

the confidence that way leads on to way,

that we will cross the paths we’re meant to.

The unfamiliarity of low-hanging branches

that darken a dirt road

do not alarm them, but seem as arms,

lonely as their own,

reaching down for some type

 of companionship.