Places We Have Never Been

We look at maps of places we have never been
sometimes in frustration, sometimes with regret
You--thinking, there is another country we will never see
now that we have children, now that we're no longer free
I suppose I tell you about such
and such person I know
who moved to Africa with two children
or took his son on a trek through the Himalayas
or his daughter to Bolivia.
But sometimes, I just watch from the hall
as you, your arms wrapped loosely around
your son's small body,
read to the light
of an illuminated globe
covered with names of places that, to him, are nothing
but the names of irregular, impossible shapes
and made-up mountain ranges,
and think:
this is a world you could never have imagined