The Cartographers Confession

i mapped the unmappable terrain of my own meridians

drew longitude through grief and latitude through discipline

the coordinates of failure intersect at twenty three degrees

due south of where I started, north of where I meant to be

but the cartographer doesn' grieve the wrong turns on the parchment

every deviation is a contour line, a garment

sewn into the topographic body, all the peaks

all the sudden drop off valleys and the weeks

of plateau where nothing rose and nothing fell

just the flat sustained continuation I know that elevation well

the nothing happening stretch that separates the climbs

thats where most people turn around, I mapped those times

not as failure, as topography, the low ground has its data

tells you what the water does, tells you what comes later

when the gradient resumes I mapped all of it, meridian by meridian

the cartographers confession, I got lost and made it discipline

i keep the map revised, keep the legend legible

every symbol cross referenced, every border revisable

this is not terra incognita, this is terra that I earned

every elevation line a lesson that I burned

into the parchment with the pressure of the real

the cartographers confession is the map was always feel

as much as measurement, the instrument and the intuition

the cartographers confession, I been making my position

up as I go

but the going makes the map

and the map is how I know

where I am when I look back

i charted every river by the sound it made at dusk

every canyon by the particular color of its rust

theres a mountain range I named for someone who wont hear the name

but the altitude was real and so was everything the same

about the way it felt to stand at the summit and realize

the summit is just another place that has a different size

of view, not a destination, a vantage, a perspective shift

the mountain doesnt reward you with arrival, its the gift

of temporarily above, of briefly having elevation

the cartographer knows better than to make that his narration

of success, the story isnt getting to the top

the story is the mapping while you walk, while you drop

into the valley on the other side, while you navigate the pass

while you read the lichens on the stone for what they say about the past

climate of this specific slope guess thats the cartographers obsession

not the peak but the particularity, the precision

i drew my childhood like a contested border zone

unclear at the edges, sovereign in the middle and alone

in a way that maps dont have a symbol for

the feeling of a territory that doesnt know what its a territory for

yet I flagged those places with a special notation

a symbol I invented, half question mark, half foundation

stone the places that were simultaneously

unknown and load bearing, simultaneously

the thing I built on and the thing I hadnt solved

some of the map evolved

while I was reading it, the ground moved underneath the pen

and I remapped it and it moved and I remapped again

and the final version of the map is still in progress

and thats not failure thats the only honest cartographic process

dont hand me your GPS of who Im supposed to be

dont triangulate my purpose by your signal tower reading

the map im drawing bleeds past every edge of every page

i need more parchment, need more coastline, need more age