Song of the Dirt Road

In my hand the last death-stick gets crumpled, tossed into a timely basket with gusto, with brave                                     applause hinted at in the winds, my pockets evacuated of their grotesque waste,
While gravelly land crunches underfoot, the flies following ecstatically, keeping my mouth closed out                              of precaution, smiling taut, accompanied at ear and helm by their buzzing, chased after like a                                trespassing giant,

I see to it that no one else walks with me, that cyclists may pass by my side, that the unlucky pedestrians                                              overhead or cast across the prairie-dog-pocked field know not of this dusty road,                                         and that I was once one of them, and may still be were it not for the ambitious development                                                  of the municipal transit system,
Delicious that technology should show me the way, articulating the tongue of the path lapping against                                       the roof of the sky, how tasty to walk West toward indeterminable mountains, how salacious                                  our daily commute through the Mother, who with classic patience waited all this time for                                       her best secrets to be uprooted,
When the rain came at last all the rocks loosened, magnifying the pores of the Earth, and my myriad                                      fly-fellows emerged from their arid hibernation to revel in wetness, and to reveal the                                                       abundance of gospel Spring,
When the worst crowds behind and ahead, and in the foot-trails of the mind, and one seeking levity                                        tilts their head up toward the descending rails, and goes not one furlong without checking                                         that the worst has been left behind, 

When the symbol of a birth manifests itself unexpectedly, and the cautious creeping feeling of good-                                          cheer winkles from the periphery, and what morose thoughts of happiness unaccomplished                                         are left at the apex of the tracks, and good habits stick out their noses to measure the                                            humidity,
When you walk alone but carry the best of everyone inside you, allons!
             You walk in crowded splendor.