When fall brought the graders to Atlas Road, I drove through gray dust thick as a battle and saw the ditch freshly scattered with gravel. Leveling, shaving on the bevel, the blade and fanged scraper had summoned sleepers- limestone loaves and blue slate, skulls of quartz not even early freeze had roused. Some rocks were large as buckets, others just a scone tumbled up and into light the first time in ages. Loose, sharp, they were a hazard to anyone passing. So I gathered what I could, scooped them into the bed and trucked my freight away under birdsong in my own life's autumn. I was eager to add to the snaggled wall bordering my single acre, to be safe, to be still and watch the planet's purposeful turning behind a cairn of roughly balanced stones. Uprooted, scarred, weather-gray of bones, I love their old smell, the familiar unknown. To be sure this time I know where I belong I have brought, at last, the vagrant road home. Copyright © 2000 by The Modern Poetry Association. This poem appears in the December 2000 issue of @3Poetry@1 Magazine. http://www.poetrymagazine.ord | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SCARLET TANAGER by JOEL BENTON THE ROSE-BUD; TO A YOUNG LADY by WILLIAM BROOME SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE: 2. IN CHURCH by THOMAS HARDY WHITE FIELDS by JAMES STEPHENS THE GIRLS' LOT by AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS EURIPIDES by ALEXANDER AETOLUS BOOKS FOR THE PEOPLE by ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH BOTTA |