Dead Reckoning
We realigned the shock absorbers on the oars and keel.
We tied fishing line to the chronometers and flew them
like weather balloons through Jupiter’s lunar eclipses.
still the parallels form no better than dead reckoning.
Medieval Stellar Cartography
Any planets or moons that enter your head or belly
or anywhere and form in your mouth as words are divine,
but should you write or draw from where they came, you will deceive
heaven and find deafness in music of the spheres and your head.
Man Overboard
Eventually, when you’re sinking and you’ve lost
hold of the rope, sunlight stops. You realize
you’ve never seen black before, or violence.
It’s too late to change course, and bubbles chart your fall.
Rough Drafts
Some maps get lost and disintegrate into the earth.
Other maps blow overboard and sink. All treasure maps
are stolen, memorized, and eaten. A few maps survive.
I once burned everything I wrote, and left my mark.
Tom Holmes is the founding editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, and
author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Cave, which won
The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013. His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at his blog,
The Line Break: http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/.