Lorraine Healy

What We’ve Forgotten

Maps are useless.
One can only get there

riding the trail of a dry,
fractious wind.

On the secret sea.
The one cartographers so feared

they placed it beyond
the lip of the world.

The one the wise
avoid dreaming about.

A place of slaked lime
and furnace sun,

cliffs like giants’ bones bleached
to chalk. A place

of lead whites, velvet
ivory brush, which fools

the eye with blinding glee. Whose
eye, though? Who gets this far

into such vacuum of air,
into this mistake of salt

and soil hardened and boiled?
Meet me on this island, beloved.

Meet me where we are certain
to die and resurrect.

The island of no name, beloved.
The place where gods are made

to be crucified.

Lorraine Healy is an Argentinean poet living on Whidbey Island, Washington.  The winner of several national awards, including a Pushcart Prize nomination for 2004, she has been published extensively.  She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from New England College, New Hampshire.  She is the author of The Farthest South (New American Press) and The Archipelago (Finishing Line Press).