There’s a plastic globe in Borders.
An equator wide as my palm
with pencil sharpener inset.
Shavings get pushed through
the South Pole into its edges.
I press my thumbnail down
on what I think is Norwich,
but is probably nearer Thetford.
Leaving here I make a line
over the curve of Europe:
over Berlin, Poland, Moscow,
skimming the Caspian sea,
the oil fields of Tengiz,
and the Kara-Kum desert.
I take a pencil and drag it
across India, along the Sivalik
mountain range through the border
to Bangladesh, down the Padma
and stop at Dhaka where I mark it
with a dot and trace my way back.
