It was mostly business, but sometimes pleasure when I traveled to places outside my trampled zone, sometimes by Jeep, or camel, or flying carpet—any conveyance that did not require a first-class ticket.
At first, I wandered without purpose, but then the search for purpose became my purpose. I didn’t find it behind a dune, or over the ocean. The day I became old, I unfolded the map that began with my birth.
An X appeared under my feet. I took it as a hint I had not been going east or west, but counterclockwise. I tried to recall the string of mental notes I had dropped on the trail to help me retrace my steps.
I once believed my memory to be as inexhaustible as Ariadne’s thread. Then I tugged on the line and found it hopelessly snagged on a jagged peak. I sat on a rock and reconsidered my mission. It was not, I decided, to slay the Minotaur.
And not wishing to spelunk into another labyrinth, I began to reverse course, hiking back through caves and hallways, around every bend and class reunion, at times cutting myself free from tangle-grass and prickly vines with my pocketknife.
Sometimes, I walked backwards, hoping to rediscover familiar landmarks. But I recognized nothing, as if my eyes had been unscrewed and replaced with a stranger’s. When I reached home, the old house was gone, a produce stand in its place.
No one there knew me, but an old farmer said, I remember your father. After he came home from the war, he always carried a pocketknife and a ball of string.
(Myrtle Beach, SC) is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Armed and Luminous (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2016). Taylor’s poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in Rattle, Comstock Review, The Pedestal, Iodine Poetry Journal, Running with Water, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Litmosphere, Gyroscope Review, and South Carolina Review, among others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Taylor formerly served as review editor for The Main Street Rag and co-editor of Kakalak. After retiring from his business career, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte in 2015.
