paddling down this rabbit hole of a backwater
because something on my way home from work
had said take to the river, so that even though

I’d put everything in the car (shovels,
provisions for two years), and I’d spent
so long trying to imagine how it would be –

the whole earth alight like a burning star
fallen from heaven, snow climbing
the doorways like a just-landed alien –

there I was just letting the stream take me,
head-torch flashing at the moon, like escaping
over the lake in A Farewell to Arms,
crossing the water with nothing but hope.