Road
Once we followed the others on all fours,
contributing trails through grass and brush
to favorite trees and watering holes
before our spines thrust us up on two feet,
gave us a taste for meat and tools and weapons,
the flame growing ever brighter between our eyes.
We sang to guide us along the lines we dreamed,
familiar landmarks, then continents, taming horses, camels,
the mighty aurochs turned to beast of burden,
the buffalo wading through rice with drooping horns,
saddles and reins and heavy yokes pulling plows,
and when the wheel came spinning down from the stars
it would not be long until path became road,
villages, towns, cities, the maps of empires
drawn on hide and parchment in ink and blood,
commerce and legions, Mesopotamia and India
paving with stone, the Romans linking half the world,
Via Appia lined with cypress, herbs and ruins,
still there after 2000 years.
The bulldozers push through red sand on the way
to something precious, a mine where we will fill
another need, a highway wider than the rest,
rushing west at ever faster speed toward a setting sun.
Chimney Swifts At Dusk
At dusk
the sky is filled
with wings.
My hotel window
on the highest floor
presents a timeworn city
built of brick and stone,
chimneys that once
belched smoke
now wait for them to return,
these sleek birds, black as soot,
mad to devour
the last mosquito and moth.
The tall stack of an old factory
across the street
blurs as I watch
the swifts spin
like a whirlwind,
then become a genie
funneled back into its lamp
when a dark hand
conjures day to a starry end.