Round Trip

Twenty miles a week we’ve walked this year:
two miles each day, Monday through Friday
we climb the road on the wooded hill across
from our home, circle the vacant offices four times.

Weekends we’ve our longer route through town:
five miles nearly, three different ponds we walk past,
two places where a bridge crosses the railroad track.
It was just this morning I announced my mathematics

that we’d walked a thousand miles in a year, my love
and where — where on earth have we come, but closer?

The old joke comes to mind: the down east curmudgeon
means to purchase a round trip ticket at the train depot.

When asked where to, his answer after a moment’s
solemnity — why, right back here, of course.