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Ilana Baer
Shoreline Cartography
Again the liquid map
unscrolls itself,
the distant murk of the mind
now clarified and close,
describing for half an instant
foamy peaks,
criss-crossed creeks,
rippling canyons.
Each new now
calls the others obsolete,
so that nothing in this world
escapes revision.
Sud-countries become
archipelagos; straits wriggle free
of constraints; an abalone glow
swallows sand.
How many drafts
drain away in an hour?
How many proofs
laid out on old latitudes?
Only tide will tell
when the driftwood compass
aims for
infallible north.
Ilana Baer is a poet and language teacher from Northern California. She hopes to one day be poet laureate of fruit.
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