Atlas

June 4, 2010 at 9:42AM

Atlas

Along the pages, I chase down a line
easterly for tea, marjoram and ginger root
spreading pinpoints by the width of my thumb.

Hellespont, Troy, Persia before the war,
from Perth to the Pribilofs, I veer at the lines
gathering way, tacking blue arcs across

similes of fences, flags, and treaties.
Following my finger’s meandering dash,
I cross reference truce with ores and mills.

In northern and southerly legends of color
my finger lingers in an arrow’s path
of gold and tin, rubies and gin.

Stretching from pole to pole, one line
or another overlaps Shackleton’s, Drake’s, De Soto’s
wake of wind-churned foam, cresting into ice.

Distance blurs in the whirl of oscillating days.
Trekking along roads with Rommel, I can feel
the concussion of helmets stacked in August

from Cherbourg to Caen, the ring in ears
dodging Lancasters, Glosters, B17s.
I’m getting crumbs in the margins

burying the two million dead in Vietnam,
noting the tonnage of dreadnoughts, the miles of chutes.
Borders shift into gray-scaled hues

ghosting skeletons behind the graphs of GDP.
Roads cross where forests were, choked in dust
swirled by the fanning of my thumb.