8. Punishment Parkway

I suppose the scenic route
is out of the question--
too much time

by lay-bys earlier
running our fingers
along the bunched steel

of braille mountains
worn through at the ocean
& where the /2/ passed through

amenable space you stand
at the edge of
the whole thing a ribbon

of iron control extending
even to the lichen's fluffy edge
so that to stray

is to fall into
the literal orchestra pit
after a Big Drop--

the vast
arbutus forest preserved
on either side of it

certainly terra incognita
before they put the highway through--
but Northfield was a labyrinth

out of Floyd Crosby's Poe
anyway so excuse me
if I never found it but

the immaculate moss meadows
argue that no one much
else did either--

there's a lot
of places dirt bikers
it turns out won't go--

but this future civil terrarium--
roamed by giant tapirs once,
by badgers as big as bears,

undisturbed by pneumatics, steam
or the shrieking factory whistle--
must now endure

the lapidary condescension
of highway patronage, the cement lobby's
largesse, the planner's passion,

the grim and anxious trucks
from which the lolling tongues of mammmals
taste the pre-Cambrian air.