I can put my finger on the still-wet picture <br />and draw a fresh route in it down the middle. <br /> <br />A new farm here, an old farm there <br />turning into horses; <br />a new pond fallen into place, <br />a new earthen dam where, I am sure, <br />an ancient milldam got its hoof cloven <br />and stones went out of the community. <br /> <br />Waterskiers already claim it for spring, <br />but team practicing, they tell me in a team, <br />on the penmanship of wakes. <br /> <br />A jacobs ladder of trash lights up the ditch. <br />The feces of prosperity — <br />hunter-gatherers at work on their salaries, <br />pre-political, still mastering marriage. <br /> <br />An old man who walks without his cane <br />when he has to wave with it. <br /> <br />I am in a corpuscle, a drop <br />of automobile, and move through the veins <br />of my neighborhood on its warm beats. <br />If the paint begins to dry here, <br />I turn the corner and the picture is wet again. <br /> <br />Small grains, young pines, whose deer carcass? <br />crocus, refrigerator, daffodil, <br />on some gentleman’s backyard gallows <br />an engine block, <br />I am in the artery for fifty miles, <br />sap below twigs, sun arctic pale. <br /> <br />(Note: Caroline County, Virginia)<br /><br />Edward Wright Haile<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-drive-through-caroline/
