Poetry | Cartography | Mary Ann Schaefer

Cartography listen
I have a thing
For maps, tacked
On every wall, doors and
Ceilings too, considering
How I need them to be
Sure, to name this physical
Nature of mine, touch the
Scientific terms, the monikers,
The namesakes of every
Apex and mountainous
Brow, the mesas, calderas,
Savannahs and tundras and
Oceanic rifts, all the drifting
Pieces of a whole . . . I pace

Alongside the tilted globe
Tracing my fingers
Carefully around this
Idea of latitudes and
Meridians and measuring
By degree every spiraling
Pinpoint, details that
Intersect on the same
Meandering lines of your
Palm, your lips moist where
Estuaries converge, breasts
Like the mirage of soft
Rolling highlands on the
Southern peninsula . . . You see

How I exhaust myself this way
In this preoccupation even at
Night mummified in cool crisp
Sheets, murmuring to the mousy
Breeze that tiptoes down from
Crestone Peak:  See I
Am here and here
And here in relation to
All past and possible
Addresses, in relation to
You, whoever wherever you
Might be, and Here
I am Here, this is
Where I am now.