TWO MAPS

Ithaca

Ulysses returns
by seven seas
and speaks with
ardor about how
rocks and minerals
bleed, and
how Ithaca, where
Odysseus walked
was -- Place or
map to surprise
ghost dangling from
the Baghdad noose.

I, Ulysses, was not one but many.
I have no number or
gender in the face of the sun.

2.
Do I know you place?
Does your pelvis break
at the continental divide?
Do I rub my chin where
mountains grew from
tired sand and people
were an after thought?

I am dislocated but
boredom drifts when
I bend my knees and
lift what cannot be
known without maps
that were lost, never kept,
when we looked back
and everything was salt.