17th Century Map Poster
Softly and baroquely, the podded cheeks of cherubs are disposed: prodding the air wth breathy shuttlecocks. Flying home to nest in cartographic rafters, east to west.
Pickering looks at the little winged faces that crowd the corners of an old map and treats them as a playful, slightly comic flock. The cherubs are the puffed-cheeked wind figures such maps often show, and the poem pictures their round, "podded" cheeks as if they were seed pods, soft and full.
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