The Map by Mark Strand

 I know I am embarking on a new journey, on a new beginning. I am ready. I am ready to leave behind the past and sail into my future. I know I am not meant to be here, that already I am readying myself to be done with this moment, that I am looking ahead.

Tomorrow is the present we never open. I am on the verge of opening it, crinkling the fabric and unknotting the ribbon. When it opens, it opens to a path that I will tread lightly and carefully. I am ready. 

I know it's not easy to leave behind memories, but I feel I've already left them behind. I am looking at my geography as if on a map, and I know that I have lingered here long enough. I'm ready to widen the boundaries of what is possible in my life, rather than confine myself within a contour. This land I'm in at the moment has caused me too much pain, but I am finally reconciled with it. I have begun to put a distance between what hurts me, and I beckon what heals me. Finally, I can and will be making my leave soon. 

The Map

by Mark Strand

Composed, generally defined

    By the long sharing

Of contours, continents and oceans

    Are gathered in 

The same imaginary net.

    Over the map

The portioned air, at times but

    A continuance

Of boundaries, assembles in

    A pure, cloudless

Canopy of artificial calm.

    Lacking the haze,

The blurred edges that surround our world,

    The map draws

Only on itself, outlines its own

    Dimensions, and waits,

As only a thing completed can,

    To be replaced

By a later version of itself.

    Wanting the presence

Of a changing space, my attention turns

    To the world beyond

My window where the map's colors

    Fade into a vague

Afterimage and are lost

    In the variable scene

Of shapes accumulating. I see

    A group of fields

Tend slowly inland from the breaking

    Of the fluted sea,

Black-wing and herring gulls, relaxed

    On the air's currents,

Glide out of sight, and trees,

    Cold as stone

In the gray light of this coastal evening,

    Grow gradually 

Out of focus. From the still

    Center of my eyes,

Encompassing in the end nothing

    But their own darkness,

The world spins out of reach. Ad yet,

    Because nothing

Happens where definition is

    Its own excuse

For being, the map is as it was:

    A diagram

Of how the world might look could we

    Maintain a lasting,

Perfect distance from what is.