Maps
Rested on hardboard, pinned in a frozen attic,
you’d once find one fledgling mind hard at it,
filling newsprint sheets with symbols, lines, gaps,
drawing coasts, joining dots, making maps.
Travelling his inside to exterior cat’s cradles,
swoops, loops, linked connections inked gracefully
with care, draft tunneled murky highlands snowing;
chart lowland towns, bypassed and decomposing.
Those wiser than him claim travel expands the mind,
scheme themselves wherever there; hope to find
a life’s work is more than just a hop on hop off tram;
functioned forty years in want of foreign lands
like Sugarcandy Mountains. Once, he travelled here,
was chased by lour clouds, walked trails of tears
escaped shrunk minds and found dark corners,
in beginnings that could only fathom close quarters.
He travelled a strange street, then mapped one more,
was glad when tracking back, to find his port door
where it was left in first steps, more back than forth
looking diffidently in comfort from covered porch.
Pushing outwards in maps, pulling inwards in marks,
what once was unknown, coalesced from dark
into clarity, corners full squared, lines into grids
and surety strode poised with brown eyes unturbid.
And it’s not enough. Hominini dragged erect before
some others’ conception, slack jawed in awe,
leaving fleeting footprints soon blown to dust,
move on, move on, from place to place like locusts.
While he's mapping fingers from her belly to breasts,
she brushes those grey hairs and rests a febrific head
and he thinks he'll leave it till tomorrow to pack a case,
for it somehow seems such a poor reward to chase.
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