Travelogue: America

Stowe, VT

Far from route 103,

where the road salt eats at the snow,

so a border of dead grass is revealed

along with the bodies of animals

ragged, half-rotten, almost indistinguishable

from the trash of travelling families…

and far too from the freshwater stream

wriggling its way through a field,

a white-frozen marsh, beneath the covered bridge,

where it appears briefly-

rushing silver beneath a skin of ice…

farther still from the church,

its steeple a rising stalagmite

-formed over time

by the constant, dripping will of God…

indeed, far from the guesthouses,

the gift shops and the grocery stores,

hidden in the shadows of slopes

stand the tombstones of old industry

-the butter tub and axe factories,

the gristmills, the wood-working shops,

long abandoned

by the imaginations of the local kids,

the ghosts of their father’s fathers…