THE COMPASS was first published in the New England Review/Bread loaf Quarterly, and was included in Cathy’s first book of poetry, The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas, won the Texas Tech University Press First Book Award (subsequently named the Walt McDonald Award) and was published by them in 1992.  Iris Press repubublished it in 1997.

THE COMPASS

When Father finally packed his bag and left
one Sunday after Mother called him a derelict,
I looked up the word in Funk and Wagnalls
and finding that it meant an abandoned ship,
thought how alike we were. Always dreaming
of traveling. Free. Sailing out of that dirty
millyard. Columbus and Vespucci, searching
some secret passage. Lands of spices. Diamonds,
gold and silver. The startled natives
bowing as if we were gods. Next day

in science class, Mr. Hanson gave each of us
a compass to keep, tried to teach us north,
south, east and west. But when he said the compass
always pointed north, my face fell. I glared
at him the rest of the period, wondering
who in his right mind would always want to go
north. An uncle had been there, had warned me
about the place where they mug you in broad
daylight, talk funny, don't understand
real English. I took the compass

home and put it in a drawer beneath the gown
my mother was saving
for when she died. That night I dreamed
of China and Rome, those pink and orange
countries in my geography book, flat paper mountains

my fingers could easily climb, oceans
calm beneath the safe ship of my hand. In the middle

of the night, when I got up to pee, I found my father
slumped, a sunken steamer, across the couch, his suitcase
leaning against the table like a terrible anchor. I

went back to bed, clutching the compass
I had dug from the bottom of the drawer, its smooth glass
sweating in my hand like a flattened globe, and changed
my mind, began planning that slow journey north.

© Cathy Smith Bowers, 1990, 1997.