Ode to the Google Maps Man
Gold-suited spaceman, terranaut,
Digital archon ever-descending,
Eyeless, every-eyed,
You carry me with you
Down from your ether-clouded reaches
To wherever I am not,
Sao Paulo or Lordes,
Seething metropolis, graffiti-blazoned
In the high, enduring sun,
The same sun pouring
On the Rue de la Grotte
Where three women are walking
In kerchiefs, and a man
Rides his bike down the serpentine
Hillside street to the hospital.
You, too, appear
With each itinerant click
Like a vision.
That evening in the Marais,
Le Sevigne, the Parc Royale,
I drank and ate and dreamed;
Or west of Clifden,
The Sky Road, the light at tipping point
To here and now and out beyond,
You transport me
There and there again, wingless, winged,
Impossible homunculus,
Cartoon bearing me back
To the forgone neighborhood
Of my youth, the lost
Towns of former lives
Imprinting me again, blurred
Faces beside curbs;
And these un-staged
Crossroads you station me
To browse, an array
Of storyboards, pathways
Of glimpse and glance
Tempting me to choose—
I love your wormhole
Portal that teleports
Though time, trucks, tarmac,
Florentine squares,
Odysseys of islands,
Ramshackle streets
Of Addis or Mumbai,
And you happy enough to be
Here as anywhere,
Fairbanks or Freeport,
Milan, Myanmar, Minsk,
Wellington or Wyandot;
Or floating over it all to scope
The vast empty stretches,
Waste clouds above Chengdu
Terracotta rooftops,
Tent cities, the human hives
Spreading, they look
Bacterial across
Forest and floodplain,
This slow writhe of a river
Idling its way to ocean,
And on His abrupt mount
Cristo Redentor,
His arms outstretched
Above the iniquitous city
Where you touch down
Again now—Icon, Voyeur,
Ever-incipient, Ever-arriving,
Disincarnate,
You who hail us,
Who harry us, who haunt us,
But cannot heal.
