By Charles M. Sumid     Copyright 2025     Written 2025 755

I. Morning Commute / Dawn Paddle

The subway map spreads like mycelium

beneath the city, its routes pulsing

with the same logic as deer paths—

always the shortest distance between

need and sanctuary. I’ve learned both:

how the downtown express skips

like a stone across stations,

how the portage trail bypasses

rapids with the same economy.

II. Reading Signs

Under the overpass, fresh tags bloom—

EXIST stenciled over GENTRIFY,

the conversation three years running.

I photograph it like bear claw marks

on boundary trees, territorial

and temporal, saying: I was here,

this is mine, until it isn’t.

In the bog, pitcher plants write

their own graffiti in red veins,

advertising sweetness that kills.

Both cities speak in warnings:

yellow police tape, yellow moss

on the north face meaning: wrong way.

III. The Substitute Teacher’s Map

She drew it on the blackboard, 1987:

“Here’s where you’ll find safety”—

the library’s quiet corners,

the bodega that extends credit,

the fire escape that leads to roof,

to sky, to anywhere but here.

Thirty years later, tracking moose

through cedar swamp, I remember

her chalk lines, how they curved

like game trails, how she knew

without knowing that all maps

are stories of survival.

IV. Underground Networks

The truffle hunter taught me:

“Smell for petroleum and paradise.”

Strange, how the subway tunnel

carries the same fungal breath,

how graffiti writers and mycorrhizae

both thrive in darkness, both feed

on what the surface abandons.

The shopping cart’s squeaky wheel

draws a sound-map through the night.

The barred owl’s call triangulates

between buildings and birches.

Both say: territory, territory,

but also: I’m listening, are you there?

V. Translation

This morning, a coyote

trots down Michigan Avenue,

turns left at the light like she’s lived here

all her life. She has. We just

stopped seeing. The city is wilderness

with right angles. The forest

is a city with older architecture.

I carry both notebooks now:

one for the heron’s flight path

over the interstate, one for

the tagger’s name becoming

smaller each year, pressed back

by progress. Both are elegies.

Both are field guides to the holy.

VI. What the Stones Know

In the park, old men play Go,

their stones clicking like prayer beads,

each move a small prophecy

about territory and time.

In the forest, I place cairns

the same way: deliberate,

temporary, marking a path

that will outlive its maker

but not its meaning.

The truth is this:

wisdom wears both costumes,

speaks both dialects,

leaves its field notes

in spray paint and lichen,

in subway tiles and birch bark,

in every surface that remembers

being written on, being read,

being necessary.

Evening: The bridge hums its history

in the same key as the loons.

I translate between worlds,

knowing both are home,

both are wild,

both are disappearing

into something else,

something we haven’t learned

to read yet.