The Map

By Gary Soto b. 1952 Gary Soto

When the sun’s whiteness closes around us

Like a noose,

It is noon, and Molina squats

In the uneven shade of an oleander.

He unfolds a map and, with a pencil,

Blackens Panama

Into a bruise;

He dots rain over Bogotá, the city of spiders,

And x’s in a mountain range that climbs

Like a thermometer

Above the stone fence

The old never thought to look over.

A fog presses over Lima.

Brazil is untangled of its rivers.

Where there is a smudge,

Snow has stitched its cold into the field.

Where the river Orinoco cuts east,

A new river rises nameless

From the open grasses,

And Molina calls it his place of birth.

Source: The Tale of Sunlight (1978)

Biography

Gary Soto is known for a body of work that deals with the realities of growing up in Mexican-American communities; in poems, novels, short stories, plays and over a two dozen books for young people, Soto has recreated the world of the barrio, the urban, Spanish-speaking neighborhood where he was raised, bringing the sights, sounds and smells vividly to life within the pages of his books. Soto’s poetry and prose focus on everyday . . .

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