Where the Map Is

by Adam Clay

No word for the snow you didn’t see pile up too quick for the eye to measure, but there’s something 

to be said for the second between taking in a vision and processing it. It isn’t pure light but it’s the 

next best thing, the only loving path through the mind to another type of mind, The Walkmen 

covering Nilsson who’s covering Dylan. Not what Plato had imagined in his time, but there’s always 

a specific way to feel homesick, a way to chart a path to loneliness without knowing its sort or its 

source. I used to think a mosaic was how best to describe an urge devout in one light and profane in 

another. We look inward and then chisel a way out.
 
 

Placeholder for Inaction

When I think too much
of words or look straight
 

through what
I’m saying (as I say it),
 

then the shell of my thought
might be the only source
 

an idea arrives from. Behind
the poet reading and through
 

the window, a couple ferries
their belongings out
 

from an apartment to their car
parked on Seventh Street, their dog
 

following back and forth.
Poetry might make nothing
 

sensible in the end
but maybe it’s that poetry
 

happens parallel to life
so that the repetition blurs
 

what happens in the moments
carved out for life. I woke up
 

this morning not knowing
I would write this poem for you.