Poem In Your Pocket Day 2020: "The Map" by Marie Howe

This year for National Poetry Month, Poem In Your Pocket Day is the last day of the month...this is a day when people take a poem with them through their day to share with the world. So let's close out our poetry celebration with a poem that, despite its brevity, speaks to the breathtakingly enormous concept of self, other, and empathy--our very presence in the world. I'm sharing it with you here--and since we are all under some form of quarantine, please consider sharing it virtually. I hope it becomes the ripple in a pond that Howe clearly intended it to be.

The Map
by Marie Howe


The failure of love might account for most of the suffering in the world.

The girl was going over her global studies homework

in the air where she drew the map with her finger


touching the Gobi desert,

the Plateau of Tiber in front of her,


and looking through her transparent map backwards

I did suddenly see,

how her left is my right, and for a moment I understood.

http://www.mariehowe.com/