When I was a youthful tike,
I had a wild passion for maps.
Until I found a country to like,
My little index finger rata-tap-tapped.
How I loved to spin the stand-up globe,
That crouched there in the corner, alone.
Silent and beckoning, waiting to be spun,
Inviting me inside to find a place to run.
Exotic, despotic, insisting I fully explore,
The wild jungles of Africa and much more.
The shapes of those grand continents
Held me in their intriguing thrall.
South America the inverted triangle
Held for me the allure of a spangle.
The noble Africa reduced in its form
To nothing but a swollen mushroom.
Australia tucked in the Southern Sea,
A giant if there ever was one set free.
Is it a continent or a prehistoric island?
The map had zigzag lines denoting highland.
I brushed the sprawl of empty Outer Mongolia,
Dusty brown flatland seemingly far holier.
Then the prosaic great plains of the US of A,
With blowing wheat and golden stacks of hay.
Whether dusty savannahs of central Africa,
Or the stark Russian steppes of distant Siberia,
I longed for glorious expanses of noble earth,
Mountain ranges and plateaus since my birth.
I never forgot twin islands of which I was fond,
Pastoral Ireland and England across the great pond.
Tales of mystery and adventure ran thru my head,
Ran with my nimble fingers across the globe instead.
Each of the great continents became a kind of friend,
To a shy child with imagination their intrigue to lend.
I saw many blank spaces that stood out on the globe;
I gazed thoughtfully as I stood in my slippers and robe.
I pointed triumphantly to a spot to say: “I will go there!
When I grow up, I want to find myself there. Do I dare?”
Just imagine soft lights, dreamy eyes and a loving gaze,
As I stared into the future through a delicate prism of haze.
The spirit of adventure overtook any sense of belonging
As I spun the rotating globe with tenderness and longing.
The world has become a very small place. With GPS and the latest transportation, we can go almost anywhere at ease. All it takes is money. But I recall those maps. Not necessarily the dusty globes in the corners of offices or libraries, but those maps of exotic places that always drew me like they drew you. And then there was that tattered old Atlas of states that rode in my car next to me long years after it was obsolete. Got me where I needed to go.
I also loved drawing maps and coloring them. With photographic images from space, those hand-drawn maps are now obsolete.
in olden days of early childhood I revolved the globe, with its latitudes and longitudes, too, to realize then, much later, its similarity with the human body with its meridians and acupoints. . . It is so nice to look occasionally back, riding on such a wonderfully flowing poem of yours, John. Cheers, alex
WHISPERS OF THE HEART is artist and author J. Allen Wilson's second book of poetry.It can be autographed and shipped within 48 hours of order. NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
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Rebecca
Love ya!
Jane
i like this
Never Stop Writing!
m
I also loved drawing maps and coloring them. With photographic images from space, those hand-drawn maps are now obsolete.
Ron
with lots of glee and mirth.
but now we have GPS,
and of course Google Earth.