13 Ways of Looking at a Map

I
What is one mountain
Or another
On a map?

II
I was lost
Like someone who does not
Know how to read a map.

III
The map was forgotten in the glove compartment of the car.
No one wanted a paper map anymore.

IV
A driver and a backseat driver
Are one.
A driver and a backseat driver and a map
Are fighting.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of longitude
Or the beauty of latitude,
The map unfolded
Or just before.

VI
The floor of the car was littered
With trash and candy wrappers.
Coffee stained the torn map
An ugly brown blur.
The name of the town
No longer legible.

VII
O corpulent men of GPS,
Why do you look for a golden app?
Do you not see how the map
Shows the way
To the women in the compass rose?

VIII
I know the legends
And the distances between two points;
But I know, too,
That the map is a record
Of all I know.

IX
After locating myself on the map,
A crease in the landscape
Obscured my destination in another state.

X
At the sight of a map,
Spread on a table beneath a yellow bulb,
Even the geeks of cyberspace
Gape in blind silence.

XI
She walked across a stony beach
Slipping this way and that on the uneven surface.
Once, a fear pierced her,
In that she mistook
The pattern on a wet stone
For a map.

XII
The ocean is roaring.
The map must be orienting.

XII
It was all beginning and ending.
It was hidden
And it was going to hide.
The map folded
On the floor of the car.