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Map of the Lost (Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry)
Map of the Lost - Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Author:Miriam Sagan Centered in northern New Mexico, this collection of poetry describes a series of journeys that create maps of place and memory. The poems travel south to deserts both mythical and real, east to childhood and the past, west to the Pacific and notions of Buddhism, and north to Alaska and a cold transcendence. Each section concludes with a return h... more »ome where reflection charts locations and people lost to everything from the passage of time to urban renewal.From Map of the Lost:Take a Left at My Mailbox
Cross Sierra Vista and enter the cul-de-sac
Where the pavement ends
Cross over and down into the acequia full of trash
Where a sodden quilt lies in the middle of where
Stream once moved sand
In eddies. The homeless camp
Disintegrates, only one mattress left
And I'm lecturing my daughter
Who steps back to photograph it
"Don't come here alone,"
And she retorts: "I have since I was eight," and then
"It's so peaceful here, but
I hate the fence."
This is no arroyo, cut by rain
But a remnant of man, an irrigation ditch
Now watering detritus, the leftover, cast off,
plastic bags, and worse.
From here you can cut
Up behind the Indian School
Past the transformer I didn't even know was there
And come out where there once were tracks
Now just the runners half buried in soil.
It's Baca Street! We're back
In the neighborhood where my daughter
Immediately becomes lost
"I don't get straight streets," she says.
My money's good here, I buy two cups of foamy chai