Maps

You are here. Here is
some mall, some array of
food courts and petty mayhem. You are
the man staring at the glass map
which is telling you that you are here,
but of course you knew that.

You imagine that the mall’s
on someone else’s map, a map
sitting on a lap in a Toyota
inching toward the place you are.
The Toyota’s slowing down and the driver
pitches a butt out the window to snuff it.

Heat gives way to snow-soaked cold just as
you’re losing your own fire to move —
where the hell is the bookstore in this place,
and now that you see how far it is
from here to there, do you really need
to read anything more
than you’ve already read?
Maybe you’re only here to be the vessel of frustration
for the ambiguity of red dots and yellow blocks
that promise destination, and another book
would just complicate matters.

Instead, you wish you were in
your own car and that you were passing that Toyota
going the other way, away from
your current location which is still
the place you were a minute ago.
Which way is the parking garage? You sink
back into the dots and blocks on the black glass.

You are here
and anyone who tells you
a map is not the territory is naive:
without this map would you be this antsy
that you’re not already somewhere else?
That’s a map for you: places with meaning
marked for your pleasure and convenience
with clear paths to the next place you want to be,
except that the cars on the road out there
are on different maps
and when you slump onto the hard slats
of the industrial benches before the glass
that holds you, tugged to immobility by that red dot,
you sense the number of journeys
you could be making, the number of maps
you could be looking at —
but you are here.