Give me a landscape made of obstacles, <br />of steep hills and jutting glacial rock, <br />where the low-running streams are quick to flood <br />the grassy fields and bottomlands. <br />A place <br />no engineers can master–where the roads <br />must twist like tendrils up the mountainside <br />on narrow cliffs where boulders block the way. <br />Where tall black trunks of lightning-scalded pine <br />push through the tangled woods to make a roost <br />for hawks and swarming crows. <br />And sharp inclines <br />where twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, <br />scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly <br />to find an unexpected waterfall, <br />not half a mile from the nearest road, <br />a spot so hard to reach that no one comes– <br />a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies <br />and nesting jays, a sign that there is still <br />one piece of property that won't be owned.<br /><br />Dana Gioia<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rough-country/
