Belly down on the rug I turned the pages large and clumsy as sails. The names stirred with the voices of ancestors, Coeur d'Alene, Petosky, San Luis, telling of work and the embezzled earth, Longdale's Furnace, Alloy, Nitro, Leadville. From the map's homely face, voices, like my mother's summoning the cat, called lost animals, Buffalo, Lame Deer, Nighthawk, Beaver, Phoenix, or like children giggled at their own jokes, Noname, What Cheer, Truth or Consequences. I took into the dark, postcards round my sleeping-pillow, places that named their pictures, setting my dreams at Licking River, Bitter Root, Lone Pine, and others whose incantation entranced my sleep, Durango, Chinook, Ramona, Monongahela. |