A Map Predetermined and Chance

“Identified, pressed, touched ‘repeatedly or restlessly,’ pleasured, hankered after, pointed at with the finger. Laura Wetherington means everything, all of everything. ‘The map is not the territory,’ said Alfred Korzybski. Perhaps Wetherington’s map is the territory. ‘All I want is universe,’ she winks.”—C.S. Giscombe, National Poetry Series judge

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Selected by

C.S. Giscombe

publisher

pages

80


NATURE A MAP PREDETERMINED AND CHANCE

           We cannot get away from the way our minds solidify:

         wood becomes lightning which turns back into wood

       while the lightning peels past gravity

far far past the human eye against lines of force this is our eyelight.

    Movement is a cliff always falling when we are at sea.

     The wave comes through our feet, the duende,

       then shoots out eyelightning like thunder we are quiet.

            We choose into what we cannot get out of:

               the way we hold our bodies.

           We hold a boat of lightning in our hands.

           Therefore, we are light into woo in the sea,

           which is a shorthand for misunderstanding

           or a shorthand for anything out of reach.

    In whichever way we meander backwards from falling

      everyone is hello and everyone a wave

               then a sea change.