Map
I had no maps marking the past
neither from those that endured it nor
from those that perished when history
was burying whole cultures
in its mass graves
had no parents
who kept the past alive who could walk
the trail back to the world before
nations disappeared languages vanished
truth left few tracks or signposts except
a commodified noun of a town or a festival
I’ve wandered through
life searching
for the language of the water and the earth
of the trees just so I can say I’m grateful
for the medicine in their animal habits
for the wind’s fortune
in effaced trails
I’ve unearthed a spiritual vocabulary
a path to an archeology hidden
like a jackrabbit among the tumbleweed
I am healed by the music of wind
quenched of spiritual thirst by the patter of rain
blessed by the sentience of this earth
and I’m swept up in my dreams
as if by a bird of prey lifting my spirit
so high I can finally see all the roads
leading me to my ancestors
Copyright © 2026 by Edgar Silex. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 5, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Map’ is the uncovered cartography from a lifetime spent decolonializing; researching genealogies; finding out who I am, where I come from, who my ancestors are; learning my ancestral language (nochta lohuan pia Tecuexe ihuan Nicarao Nican Nahua); shedding colonial ideologies; realigning a career with a healthy earth; healing historical trauma; resurrecting diets, medicines, stories, and histories. All which slowly unveiled the unacknowledged Indigenous roots in the daily ceremonies of my childhood, their origins erased generations ago when my ancestors were forced into worshipping Western idols for survival.”
—Edgar Silex
Edgar Silex
