Inspired by this...A New Kind of Map

Inspired this evening by this marvelous post by Rima Staines, I followed her links to the dark mountain.  Inspired by what I read there a little while ago...I wrote this poem off the top of my head.  It really is straight off the top of my head, because I always have this illogical feeling that it will somehow be magic if only I just don't think about it too much, so I write the first thing that comes into my head.  The phrase that came into my head when reading the dark mountain manifesto was "we need a new kind of map"...and being rather enamored of the idea of maps, I went from there to see where it would go.  I suppose we can consider it a first draft, though as I said, I always feel it loses something if you fiddle about with it too much...........


I Wished for a New Kind of Map

I wished for a new kind of map 

one marked ‘here dance’ and ‘now crawl here’
a path of bread crumbs to follow to a stream I can drink from
and not fear what’s in it.

I wished for a new kind of map
with no names but only the ones that came to me as I passed
whispered by the trees, the rocks and knowing
I heard them as I hear you.

I wished for a new kind of map
that requires an old canvas swag and a tongue full of songs
no tyre tracks, only spiralling footprints winding the ways
of those who have gone before.

I wished for a new kind of map
changing with each unfolding
what use is a page that tells the same lie each time?
Where’s the journey in that?

I wished for a new kind of map
that might lead me to a different when as well as where
and if I dance where yesterday I walked, I might arrive
in a stranger place than before.

I wished for a new kind of map,
though indeed, it is the oldest kind of all
the soft re-membering of my eyes to places new
yet beloved and long lost.

I wished for a new kind of map
that showed the spaces between the roads, and not the roads at all
and marked the wilds where wilds once were
and marking made them so.

I wished for a new kind of map
in a song I can sing and be sung to
in a story that tells me I am
on a journey that has no end.

Christina Cairns © 2011