was unthinkable even twenty years ago,
unless you counted calling someone local
and listening for when to take a right turn.
A decade earlier, you needed a payphone.
Now, besides GPS-pinpointed online maps,
you can photograph the landmarks to help
retrace your steps. Maybe this would have
made a difference, removing triggers for
arguments along country roads that grated
like gravel pinging into the undercarriage.
I don’t remember where we were heading,
but we had by then passed the white horse
carved into the chalk bedrock of the hills
so as to be visible from the B3098, and if we
had smartphones then we would have shot
many photos to admire for many seconds
before we filed them away. But with film,
and with you as inadept at photography
as navigation, it flashed on my peripheral
vision for a second and was gone, just like
a wild animal sighting validating the prints
in the snow, else a snowflake on my palm.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 23, Issue 5.
Hsien Min Toh has written four books of poetry, most recently «Dans quel sens tombent les feuilles» (Paris, 2016). His work has previously been published in the likes of Atlanta Review, the London Review of Books, Manoa, and Cider Press Review.
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