Cartography by Linda McKenna

I have made a map for the lost.
It skirts the main thoroughfares, 

favours blind alleys and dead ends.
In broad daylight I copy it, over

and over, wearing out my stack
of coloured pencils; the parings 

crisp and fall around my feet.
I think about steeping my map 

in tea to make it look old, seem
more real. I might lodge it between 

broken window panes, under loose
paving slabs, inside an abandoned 

dog kennel, or in the wrecked ship
dying by the river bank; anywhere 

the lost might be. The key is the one
we learnt at school, a legend pitched 

between childish drawings and an arcane
code. Concentric circles are slopes, 

gentle or steep, dotted lines, borders;
but a windmill is a windmill.

………………..

Linda McKenna’s debut poetry collection, In the Museum of Misremembered Things, was published by Doire Press in 2020. The title poem won the An Post/Irish Book Awards, Irish Poem of the Year. She won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing in 2018. She has had poems published in a variety of publications including, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The North, The Honest Ulsterman, Crannóg

Twitter: @mckennalinda