I culled the most spectacular photos
of Patagonian peaks and glaciers,
green valleys and fjords,
photos others had scaled
slick escarpments to gather,
digitized, into their lenses.
These landscapes, frosted with cold
and a full moon
or lit on fire with the setting sun,
took me in, virtual traveler,
wove me into the fabric
of an unimagined life.

Ushuaia, one-time penal colony,
pin on the map,
tip of a continent,
beckoned as its polar cousin, Anchorage,
had once lured me–
community on the coast,
like a density of toy Lego houses
dumped at the edge of the carpet,
and always the mountains rising
my neck craning upward
to the peaks,
vaulted nights of unnamed stars.