The Tangent’s Hand

I sit with my plan,
a list of sentences waiting,
the map of what I swore I would say.

And then...
a glimmer,
like light skipping sideways across the table,
a thought tugging at my sleeve.

I tell myself
stay here,
but the tug becomes a hand,
warm, insistent,
inviting me into a dance.

Soon the plan is a shadow
and I am moving where the current takes me...
down hallways of memory,
into fields where the grass
whispers secrets I had forgotten to hear.

It looks like distraction,
but it feels like devotion-
this following of small, luminous threads
through the thicket of the day.

And when I return,
the page is different,
the words more true,
as if the tangent itself
was the compass I had been looking for.

Perhaps it is the soul’s way 
of saying:
walk here.
Trust this turn.
Let truth find you
by surprise.