The Myth of Mapmaking

There are, even today, places where you can get utterly lost.
A man and a woman, for example, making love for the first time,
falling into each other, falling like the first leaves of autumn.
They are brave, like that, believing in adventure and footsteps

coming to meet them. In the morning, each nerve is strained;
they adjust to swimming in fear. They try out their new voices
to recall a version of certain events: Speak to me, he says.
She speaks the language of love with her tongue and her fingers.

They concentrate fear in a word: You. They close their eyes
to know the leaves that brush across their faces.