Belly down on the rug I turned the pages large and clumsy as sails. The names stirred with the voices of ancestors, Coeur d'Alene, Petosky, San Luis, telling of work and the embezzled earth, Longdale's Furnace, Alloy, Nitro, Leadville. From the map's homely face, voices, like my mother's summoning the cat, called lost animals, Buffalo, Lame Deer, Nighthawk, Beaver, Phoenix, or like children giggled at their own jokes, Noname, What Cheer, Truth or Consequences. I took into the dark, postcards round my sleeping-pillow, places that named their pictures, setting my dreams at Licking River, Bitter Root, Lone Pine, and others whose incantation entranced my sleep, Durango, Chinook, Ramona, Monongahela. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IMAGINARY ANCESTORS: THE GIRAFFE WOMAN OF BURMA by MADELINE DEFREES LETTER TO JOSEPH WARREN by ROBERT FROST THE OCTOROON by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A CARELESS HEART by ISAAC ROSENBERG FAIR HARVARD by GEORGE SANTAYANA HYBRIDS OF WAR: A MORALITY POEM: 3. THAILALND by KAREN SWENSON |