Finding Direction in the Dark

You hear the news and the floor
falls out from under you:
life will never be the same.

Bewilderment. At a loss
to match up what you know
with what you’ve known all along–

and yet it doesn’t happen.
I’m not taking this in.
They want to talk to you now,

all the peripherals,
who think they know but don’t.
Loss they cannot take from you,

no matter how hard they try.
This can’t be happening.
Memory calls directions;

no choice but to keep catching
and jumping on the pain
to wherever it takes you,

down spirals dark in your mind,
across circuits of heart
that still snap and pang so hard

without warning again and
again until the signs
make some allusion to sense:

north, south, east, west, up and down
in a language you know
and yet unknown until now.