North or South, East or West?
Jim Tilley

Some places have customs and practices
all their own, often at variance with those of
the outside world, as if people in those venues
had never encountered or considered it.

Brigadoon comes to mind, and Shangri-La,
idyllic spots where the goings-on elsewhere
don’t register. These days, many of us would
like to live out the rest of our lives that way,

dismount from the rocking horse of daily news,
especially since that stallion has been bucking
sharply for quite a while now more than gently
up and down. For me, relief begins while

passing through the O’Neill Tunnel, a lengthy,
yet welcome, underpass beneath the sound
and sight of the world’s tumultuous events
(or at least Boston’s), but isn’t complete until

I cross the overpass above the Cape Cod Canal,
the Sagamore Bridge raising me high enough
above troubling matters to feel lighter than air,
though the thing that’s strange about the Cape

is its sometimes disorienting sense of direction,
as if nobody who lives here has ever heard
of a compass, and I don’t mean the kind
by which we’re supposed to lead our lives,

morality long having bitten the dust. On a map
where the curled arm of the peninsula ends
in a fist at Provincetown, the farthest point
north, you’d think that would be the Upper Cape

(top of the map), the place you’d have to travel
farthest to reach. But no, the Upper Cape
is the shoulder at Sandwich soon after you
cross the bridge. It’s about sailing down from

Boston, not driving a car. Speaking of which,
one of the main thoroughfares is Route 28,
and wouldn’t you know it? South from Orleans
to Chatham along the ocean to the east is

28 North, and west from Chatham to Sandwich
is a continuation of 28 North. According to
the locals, that’s because traveling the road
in that sense ultimately takes you to Boston,

which is, and always has been, to the north
of the Cape. Go figure—it’s not the direction
that you’re moving, but the place you might
reach if you just kept going, whether or not

you want to get that far. That’s a way of life
I could grow accustomed to. Also Wellfleet
oysters on the half-shell with champagne while
taking in the sun sinking slowly behind the bay.