It always comes to this

Curious how subtraction
Weighs heavy
Like cold cement
On an old fire

Or loss sharpens
The appetite
Like the blades
Of hail on unkempt hair

Or how distances that
Cannot be bridged
Drag on the memories
Of private maps

But maps have
A power of their own
To clothe the feet
In hours and miles

And lift the eyes
To the unexplored
Crevasse, col, or cwm,
And down to laces untied

It always comes to this
Squinting in the morning sun
A stretch, a sigh, then
To add one small step