Poem: Cartography

Cartography

Words: Emily Shearer
Image: Tawny Davis
QuailBellMagazine.com

I am a man with a penchant for studying maps
and their narratives trapped in the dimension of border and landmark,
squiggle of river, brushstroke of shoreline.

I quantify canyons and caves        
with the tools of a surveyor: compass, prism, pen.
The places I venture implore excavation,

but I cannot extract or draw conclusions against the backdrops
where you women prop your friezes,
where you shudder and quake, where your ground is firm.

This is how we map the world: lines converge in even measure.
Metered footsteps.  Steady drumbeats.  Logic of Polaris.
Every key a notched fit in the lock for which it was tumbled.

And I stumble to follow the lines drawn out, out beyond            
the corners [of your eyes], the stories [of your evers]   
the echoing chasms [of your journeyed hearts.]           

                                        I am a woman my pockets pregnant with apples.  
                                       Studying maps belittles the act of wandering.
                                       As I travel, I mark land and time by absence.

                                        Remember the furniture store, you bought me that chair,
                                        I later painted it blue, the same color on our bedroom walls,
                                       when we framed ourselves by walls.  Gone now, that dark encapsulation.

                                        Whatever I pretend to understand about intimacy
                                        I learned from walking the labyrinth - me to you
                                        and tracking back again.

                                        Masses and bodies between us were extant before
                                        the pens of cartographers, the equipment of surveyors
                                        determined their dimensions and contours.

                                        And this is how we commemorate distance.
                                        We circle to the center to discover where we are.  Where we are
                                        we find by spiraling outwards.

#Unreal #Poetry #YinYang #Female #Male #Logic #Emotion #Photography #Collaboration #PoemAndPhotoCollab
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