"When I Heard the Learned Cartographer" by A.E. Ash

When I Heard the Learned Cartographer
A.E. Ash

At his cluttered desk, Jackson, age thirty-seven,
drinks tarry coffee from a cup with feeble paper handles
that remind me of wings on a flightless bird.
His restless hands trace gestures in the air.

“A real innovation was aerial photography.
And sonar for oceanic topography maps.” Two chasms fjord
the contour of his mouth, dividing the stubble-field
above his top lip from an expanse of sun-tanned cheek plateau.

I ask him about the old days. If the ancient methods still exist.
I want to know, who charts by sextants and astrolabes?
Who navigates by westing and the stars? He laughs shortly.
“Nobody much, thanks to all these technological advances.”

He pauses, surveys his fingernails, stretching wide his hands.
“I like knowing things are exact and measurable,” he says.
I nod but notice his walls are covered in yellowed maps,
their paper seas traversed by brave, tiny schooners and leviathans.

To see more of Ash’s work, check out FIVE Vol. 1 No. 12.

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