The Cartographer

The unexpected landscape of a face -
eyebrows, Pythagorean, two lonely peaks
viewed from a far distance; the angry creep
of magma on Mt. Nose, blackbird perched at its tip;
the stout peninsula to the island of Ear...

(When did I become so hard, so much stone?
So much silica and ash and shingle?)

The rud of my cheek, a nun at prayer;
a hare stops a beat in a loam-black field
and cocks a velvet ear at my chin;
my mouth, the loom of familiar hills
across the firth, and a curragh riding
the rough swell of a shadow sea; eyelids,
storm-bound, new weather system moving in,
my right, a question mark, almost
a misunderstanding, the thought snared
in the diligence of your mapping.

And far to the North, beyond the flat
brim of the known world: there be dragons.