Daunting

A daunting map is all

We got, smudgy-ink’d in

Green relief. It lends airs

Of disbelief to our fever’d

Marginal lot. Books we read

Are the sort antiquarians recommend—

The frenzy of a zealot’s

End, the history of a social

Obligation, sexual exercise for sport.

Out the tent-flap door

One sees the piercing blue’d

Stretch of a lake obtrude.

An envoi reports ‘the way

Is mere wavering,’ unmark’d, and

Apt to sully souls used

To hours of senseless hammering.

—John Latta