The first Tuesday in this warm November
brushes Long Island in a last caress
before winter repels our communities

The house is humming with many lives today.
Too drowsy even for a slice of apple
or her own glass of wine, she prepares

The fish circle the seas a thousand times
a day, never diverging from the endless
path of blue opening up before them. 

These days our artifacts live in dormitories,
prisons, adopted homes; the world’s museums.
Fragments of stone and bone, white figurines,

Beginning as usual in the dark
well of an expensive late-night taxi,
you recall this scene; your father rushes

Reflected horribly in the grand piano,
the sky is offered up as your accompanist.
You pick out a melody with one hand,

Martha Hollander’s poem “Three Geographers” appeared in our Winter 1992 issue. Her latest collection is The Game of Statues. Bending over the map on the floor
that unfolds like a rare carpet
we trace our trip with warm, stumbling fingers.
Sometimes we l…