Soft brown sand fills what was
Once a pothole, a puddle
Offering miniature reenactment
Of the silting of a pond.

Erosion, the wash of memory
From higher ground to lower,
Exposing the rocky heights of the road,
Even as it fills fifty years' ruts.

Feet kick dust, soles caress rocks,
As legs find their way easily
Down the old tracks and avoid,
As easily, the grass reborn on the center hump.

"Yellow sulfur, from coal slag;
Pale, not red; none of the fresh bleeding
Color of the Earth's open wounds,"
As eyes analyze three tiny rocks.

The eyes are focused close,
Mere strides in front of the feet,
Perhaps to warn of small impediments,
Though that seems extraneous to sight,

Extraneous to the pleasure of watching
A line of ants behave as though
The clear width of the overgrown road were
A superhighway, ant lanes from ditch to center,

Express ants, hurrying, passing their fellows,
Worker ants laden with bits of food,
Some running left, some right, perhaps
Engaged in commerce between two anthills?

Then there are the flowers, a secret gardener's
Spray, so tiny they remain a secret,
Eighth inch wisps of yellow
Hiding among plantain leaves and rough, wide grass.

Above is what? Blue sky, cumulous clouds, yellow sun,
A sometimes dappled view
Created by overhanging tree limbs
Some thick with tight white woven egg sacs.

To the right a store of memories,
Red shingling of "Poor Man's Brick"
Mostly fallen to reveal
Board-and-batten undergarments.

The rusted round metal sign
Still reads "Coca-Cola," barely;
The rusted rectangle at its side
Says "Mailpouch"---I think.

"I bought candy here, I remember,
As an imaginary child
In a non-existent life
Several dozen poems ago."

"Well, I laid beneath the rafters
In the cabin loft, counting raindrops
Until their clatter turned my bed
Into a metal-roofed drum.

"Yes, the cabin down the road,
The one now completely fallen,
A mass of ivy-covered boards and logs,
Thick rusty nails piercing the splintered boards;

 "I lay there on a non-existent wedding night,
Some writer's anima,
Cheeks red from mingled embarrassment and pleasure,
Not quite certain I still was 'good';

"More certain as the equally imaginary
Child of the city playing farmer,
Thinking the fireplace so romantic
Before the chimney split and fell."

Chronicler of tractors and coal trucks,
I find both; the tractor at the edge
Of a field fresh cut,
But wrapped with five years vines and multiflora.

---For the coal truck, it sits,
Hood raised like a panting dog's snout,
Among the locust saplings that took root
Beneath the half-reclaimed highwall.

The road ended at someone's door, once.
The door exists no longer;
Just a few cinder blocks that were support
For a trailer long hauled away.

There was a cemetery
On the hill across the road;
Today I cannot find it,
Lost to vines and maple trees.

There was an artificial memory
Carefully fabricated to fill the blank past,
Now itself gone to ruin,
A road not traveled any more.

4-18-2000
 

Index     Wilson's Splendid Bread