A country road
at noon. Whirring
dust devils stir
the dust. Thick
chalk covers weeds.
A dead squirrel
presses against dirt,
striking a pose
of intense listening.

An old farmer lives
in the small farmhouse
beyond the hill, but this
is a dead end, just a path
through cornfields. And
winter, so no one has
driven this road in months.
A hawk circles above
the frozen creek.

Walking to clear
the mind, you imagine
the earth as one piece
of gravel on a winding
road filled with dips,
washed out places,
weeks encroaching
so that the way narrows
to a dirt path ahead.

God is out walking
catching a snowflake
on his tongue, surrounded
by emptiness, sharpened
by it. He sits on a flat rock
and pulls off a boot, pinching
between fingers this earth
that reminds him he is
weary and cold and alone.

I was five.
We were just setting down to supper
when his body filled up the door,
breath coming in fevered coughs,
hammered knocks shattering dusk.

Terrified,
our eighty-five year old neighbor,
seating now at the table,
between gulps of water,
warned us about the brush draggers.

At nine,
walking into the kitchen
for a last glass of milk before bed,
he saw the first one
dragging a limb through the back door.

A gaunt little man (or boy)
no taller than his knees
gripping the fork of an oak limb,
scraping the sides against the cabinet
and muttering obscenities.

Behind him,
equally sullen and evil-tempered,
a line of dwarf-like men or elves
pulling brush across the carpet,
through the rooms and out the front.

No matter
if we chalked them up to senility
or too many pills, or not enough,
and circled the tables with knowing looks,
secure in our own senses.

Real,
I told myself as I watched his breath
expelled in spasmodic gasps,
fist pounding the solid table--
that's what they were, to him.

Having survived a close call on the road,
and resisting an urge to raise a salute
to the woman staring into an open field
as her car veered into the oncoming lane,
I arrive at home churlish and anti-social.
Momentarily preferring rocks to humans,
I walk briskly toward Wallace Park,
trading sidewalk for the stiff grass,
a gesture less crude but equally heartfelt.
Rebellious, I walk through brambles
growing unchecked beside a drainage ditch.

Despite this small gesture of discontent,
my allegiance to the human race remains,
having no urge to be a limestone fossil
trapped forever inside indifferent stone.
Nature is no less callous, or thoughtless.
Even as I kick leaves underfoot,
the wind makes a series of obscene gestures
in my face, and screams at my hands.
Under assault, I easily make a transition
from disenfranchised to merely disgruntled,
cragged and battered and hungry for supper.

Descending the embankment to escape the wind,
tripping over tree roots and tangled weeds,
I marvel at my own gesture of indignation,
its shortage of economy, empathy, and poise.
Sitting on a flat rock, stamping frozen feet,
I now apologize to the woman in the blue car
for my blunt tone and boorish manner.
Fingering a fossil stone, I can now admit
to staring, equally moved, at the empty field,
only a soaring hawk to disturb its solitude,
circling and circling above the frozen ground.

With our neighbor's barn
belching black smoke
into afternoon sky,
and the bridge's rusted framework
and sun-bleached planking
cracking beneath weight
of the truck's front tires,
the bridge's death knell sounded.
Even the concrete supports
threaded with poison ivy
shifted slightly to give warning,
so the fire truck retreated
to choose an alternate route
five miles out of the way
that would leave Carter's barn
a smoldering ashpile.

Fast forward one year.
In my brother's '63 Dodge Dart,
heading for high school
and a world beyond these fields
beyond the frozen creek,
the thinning gravel road,
small huddled town
waiting on the edge of hills,
we came upon workmen lifting
a metal beam across the bridge,
with another in welding mask
turning up the white-hot flame.
But as we were about to turn about,
one workmen raised a signal
and the welder stepped aside,
those lifting the beam backing
away till they stood in the ditch,
and we were motioned on,
the last to feel rotting planking
give way to the weight of tires,
to hear the popping of iron supports
like those of an old man's knees,
cartilage separating from bone,
nesting in the tangled ivy
incensed at our insult of trespass,
a gesture all too familiar in our lives.

Back on gravel once more,
two awkward teenagers
who always had felt there
would be no turning back,
we watched in the mirrors
as the signal was given,
the metal beam put in place,
shield on the helmet lowered,
and the flame that would later
be used to set fire to planking
stacked in the field,
first touched metal.