Maps 2

On the wall of the commune’s living room
someone’s pasted all the topographic maps
for the entire area, connected them carefully
and made sure that every contour line
matches its continuation on the next map.

Over time, you’ve put a pin into every place
you’ve been where something happened. You
define that broadly — place of the first
owl, the first slimemold, the orange shine
of the last place you fell and laughed about it

instead of cursing the ground itself for its treachery.
Red means good here, blue means bad, and everything
is based in silver sharp and true that leaves holes in the map
where you think you saw something meaningful once.
It’s not like there’s blood in there —

oh, there’s something seeping up from within,
but it’s clear. It’s like plasma —
there are things floating in it you can’t see, things
critical to life that are carried through you without you knowing
exactly where anything is at a given moment.