This is where the old road died,
on its knees and far from home,
under Massachusetts pines,
beneath a grief of teardrop cones.
It’s as if the road had travelled here
to just give up among the trees.
Disappointed in its career,
demoted to the sticks and weeds.
No one ever comes this distance –
out to where the asphalt stops;
where roots and tendrils push insistent,
cracking through the buckled blacktop –
(except perhaps for logging work
when pines elsewhere have all been cut?),
but on this day a rented Merc
from distant Boston motors up.
A balding man gets out and stretches,
attending to his quads and glutes.
Corpulent from business lunches,
he puffs away into the woods.
Along the trail on sandy spurs,
down undulating gully beds,
he threads between the creaking firs
a washboard sky above his head.
Single-minded in intention
he knows the woods give way to dunes;
he’ll run right to the crumpled ocean
to greet the eastern evening moon.
The indices, the rise and fall,
the dead-cat bounce, the J shaped curve;
covered options, margin calls –
Praise be! The Federal Reserve!
The forest drums, the dark sea wails,
dusk becomes his running mate.
He pounds his heart until it fails
The sky drops stars, the tall pines quake.
The morning wind brings nothing new
the waving trees complain and bend.
Damp ditches bill for payment due,
a bluejay takes its dividend.
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[The author reads this poem, set to his own musical composition and playing:]
