These are roads to take when you think of your country <br />and interested bring down the maps again, <br />phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend, <br /> <br />reading the papers with morning inquiry. <br />Or when you sit at the wheel and your small light <br />chooses gas gauge and clock; and the headlights <br /> <br />indicate future or road, your wish pursuing <br />past the junction, the fork, the suburban station, <br />well-travelled six-lane highway planned for safety. <br /> <br />Past your tall central city’s influence, <br />outside its body: traffic, penumbral crowds, <br />are centers removed and strong, fighting for good <br /> reason. <br /> <br />These roads will take you into your own country. <br />Select the mountains, follow rivers back, <br />travel the passes. Touch West Virginia where <br /> <br />the Midland Trail leaves the Virginia furnace, <br />iron Clifton Forge, Covington iron, goes down <br />into the wealthy valley, resorts, the chalk hotel. <br /> <br />Pillars and fairway; spa; White Sulphur Springs. <br />Airport. Gay blank rich faces wishing to add <br />history to ballrooms, tradition to the first tee. <br /> <br />The simple mountains, sheer, dark-graded with pine <br />in the sudden weather, wet outbreak of spring, <br />crosscut by snow, wind at the hill’s shoulder. <br /> <br />The land is fierce here, steep, braced against snow, <br />rivers and spring. KING COAL HOTEL, Lookout, <br />and swinging the vicious bend, New River Gorge. <br /> <br />Now the photographer unpacks camera and case, <br />surveying the deep country, follows discovery <br />viewing on groundglass an inverted image. <br /> <br />John Marshall named the rock (steep pines, a drop <br />he reckoned in 1812, called) Marshall Pillar, <br />but later, Hawk’s Nest. Here is your road, tying <br /> <br />you to its meanings: gorge, boulder, precipice. <br />Telescoped down, the hard and stone-green river <br />cutting fast and direct into the town.<br /><br />Muriel Rukeyser<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-road-62/
