the space between cities

The space between cities is a body of distance
hardly translatable into a map we can pretend
able to transverse by way of roads and rails,
ports and piers cohering so-called boundaries

of what is there and here and then and now as
east and west and north and south referring to
sun and wind and seasons, the way we attempt
landmarking passages if only to remember all 

places we've been, also those never been to 
except heard by name or gestured at in story.
The space between is body of distance, tunnel
lighted dimly: memory and dream, both palpable

to skin, real enough to hear the laugh from
a mind's photograph of one's own ageless self 
in a moment everlasting. Who else is there?
an entire library of snapshots handwritten in

cursive with names, some clearer than others, 
invoked often as bridges over which one's own 
mind and body travels, loop of a map a place
only in river-spaces crossing between cities.