“Archipelago” by Mary Buchinger

    crumbs 

 to be swept 

from the map

(broken mirror on the sidewalk

  its splinters dazzled by sun    

       an accident    this beauty 

wreckage   wrought

                     the sky fills in  

                each fragment brims)

     an archipelago: 

a chain of islands

        and also, 

what contains them—

Tierra del Fuego—     

                                   sparks 

                                    flung across 

                                            the Strait

   The poet canceled 

the place where she grew up

       where she gave birth to her children 

                                      and raised them

Sometimes I too feel ready 

      to excise and renew

                I bite my nails 

    trim the split ends of my hair

I think about the things 

       that will be gone

              how they will leave me

 The flowers from my friend

lean out from a cut-glass vase

      that cuts their stems 

   into diamonds of green

                  The cat chews 

                on the single stalk 

                  of purple buds

When I was a child

           one of my chores 

                          was to watch over 

                            the burn barrel   

poke the blaze

  help the fire turn the pages 

          of the Sears catalogue

             its socks and small houses

and render its complete world of things 

  to flame and ash

I loved to watch the grey elements

             played by wind and oxidation

                   twirl up and away 

                             littering the sky

             then fall  cool 

                      into the garden

      I recognize my archipelago 

   the self in pieces  some semblance

  of what was   

     pure floating  of incorrigible bits  

                      un-summing

      a missing of the homeland  

                       (that indelible idea)