A Cloud Atlas is the Territory!

This is a poem inspired by the themes in the film Cloud Atlas.
(Post's title is a play on Alfred Korzybski's phrase "the map is not the territory".)

Language is a castle in the sky,
owned by no one,
growing new towers with each new subject that enters.

In conversation, magic! a tower appears!
a horseman passing by a grave,
or perhaps the snot-green sea.

through metaphor they move from mind to mind,
resurrecting echoes of the past,
a mother’s love, a culture’s majesty

And in that ever-mysterious moment,
when I first learn to see through your eyes
I briefly escape my own mind’s walls,

and surrounded instead by culture’s castle,
observantly, I notice the castle rising,
propelled by the breath of giants.

Looking forward to reading the novel!