For a data collection exercise
at work, never mind what it was about,
they asked me to walk slowly on a grid 
of many squares, each a meter per side,
lingering in them as I strolled along. 

After a few minutes, my thoughts began 
to wander; it occurred to me this could
be like the path of an ancient pilgrim 
who attains spiritual contemplation 
while he meanders a serpentine path

defined by concentric zigzags that lead
both inward and outward where they are laid
on the stone floor of a cathedral’s nave, 
or bordered by winding topiary 
in the garden of a monastery. 

Although I cannot say why, my first wife
entered consciousness, how she left suddenly 
without explanation, a mystery
I have never been able to solve, 
only grasping the vague notion that we 

must have come to unreconcilable 
disagreement. At random intervals,
years later, she still sends me a very 
occasional letter to let me know 
I have been on her mind. Her latest note 

is a fond recollection of a game 
I have enjoyed since childhood: a shifting 
labyrinth, walls in flux, where players race 
with each other to find treasure. For her,
I assume, this memory was a point

of shared connection. But what I recall,
with amazement, from playing together 
is a board overturned, cards on the floor,
and her storming away from the table 
when she thought the game was not going well.