Salvation in cartography.

The dictates: paper is better,

preferably bought at a
ramshackle gas station

where a grimy kid tries
to sell you a rock while

you hand her parents cash
because the pumps

are antique because
you are in the middle

of California nowhere
during a burning season

and all the other stations
have sealed up their tanks

not that you’ve seen any
this far out and are a mile

away from hitting empty.

Arterials, arterioles–
I’m drawn to curving lines

and country roads, now
mainly reserved for

inconvenient detours.
Gone the open days

of trying a different way
for the hell of it, unfolding

land on a superheated hood,
the finger-traced disputes

of the good and properly lost.