Ars Poetica

In your home is a map,
framed but never mounted,
portraying a small area of land
from your youth. It occupies
different rooms of the house
whenever you look for it,
but always in a closet,
under a bed, slid between
the wall and a bookshelf
full of poems. You've tried
to understand this map
for years, tracing its lines
to find some meaning beyond
the obvious: childhood home,
street, cornfield, neighbors.
The map, you feel, made you
somehow. Every day
you wake up and look for it.
When you are motivated,
you reproduce it, tracing
again and again. Now
you've bought a new home
hoping the map will follow
or stay behind—you're not
sure which is worse.

Thanks for reading! This year I'm writing poems about moving into my first house and dealing with a lot of drama and evolution in this and other parts of my life. We'll see where it goes.