My Father as Cartographer

In dim light now, his eyes
   straining to survey
the territory: here is the country
   of Loss, its colony Grief;
the great continent Desire
   and its borderland Regret;

vast, unfathomable water
   an archipelago—the tiny islands
of Joy, untethered, set adrift.
   At the bottom of the map
his legend and cartouche,
   the measures of distance, key

to the symbols marking each
   known land. What’s missing
is the traveler’s warning
   at the margins: a dragon—
its serpentine signature—monstrous
   as a two-faced daughter.