Guidance
The best guidance is given obliquely.
Today, trying to remember which screen
Belonged in which window, I noticed
Codes scrawled on the mildewed frames -
E4, N2, W3, corresponding to the sides
Of the house and numbered clockwise,
Each window a quarter hour.
Through those penciled coordinates
The man who sprayed the haze
Out of these screens in summers past
Was guiding me, but obliquely,
Like the farmer in that haiku of Issa's
Who, asked for directions, points
The way with a radish.