a dynasty and then some.

How do you lie with these maps and not get
Paper cuts
Unless you are a paper doll
Hand in hand in a row.
Unless the high noon sun
Unbuckles, knees in soil, and points the gun
At your head and says
Find a path, fingernail a contour,
On ground or on lover’s back
Even if it leads to your own front door
And it has always been your own front door.
Unless you, fair-handed, fair-bodied,
If wearing a little too thin,
And wearing a little too much,
Are pressed against our scripts;
Caverns and mountains and the inevitable glacier.
Cartography is professional agony:
Making a living in lines and crushed ice dreams.