Another Highway 61, Cautiously Re-visited

It is decommissioned, off-limits, outright verboten,

Yet is traversed nonetheless,

Its patrons a mix of the pruriently curious,

The thrill-seeker, the merely woebegone.

As they have time on their side,

The hub-bub of school buses and suburban commuters

No concern as they navigate the buckled and broken asphalt

(The conflagration underneath changing the topography

Daily, sometimes even hourly)

They will stop to paint some phrase, some bon mot

On this roadway-cum-canvas:

Mostly the narcissistic monologue we bray at the universe,

The assertion that we were here, are here,

And (though it is plaintive yet unspoken) that we always may be,

Augmented with light hearted double entendres

And grim, hectoring Biblical quotations,

While not far away, the re-directed two lanes of blacktop

Carry onward, indifferently proceeding on its way

Through these stolidly scruffy old anthracite towns,

Their landscapes and the ground beneath them

Quiet as the sepulcher, the vagaries of their fates above the sod,

Stalking them with a ruthless implacability.

 

Author's Note

State Highway 61 in Pennsylvania once ran through the borough of Centralia, though it does so no longer, as property values in that humble burgh are not what they once were.

Reviews

[h d e rushin]

Since America is so strung along sometimes without reason, just roads, we assume the purpose of certain places were either commercial or historical. Perhaps even (oh lord) architectural l. So for miles and miles nothing changes / for a traveler from the east or midwest until they reach the south.And.Since Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan all have rows and rows or corn fields, and since on Sundays the inhabitants go to Sunday school to the chime of a ringing bell, you won't know where the hell you are until someone asks you, "how's your day going"? The bible belt has so little to do today with Jobe, Or Matthew. and more to do with under-employment, Monsanto and opioid addiction. But this is a poem which means that you have chosen the mysticism of property lines and thorough fares....I am imagining the people of this borough this July morning. Some with long sleeve shirts for cleaning up from the storms that swept through this area over night. Some without..Then again, sometimes the mysticism chooses us.

great poem.....dana

[W.k.kortas]

There is a poem in this review--hell, several. You are one of a kind.

[Delmar Cooper]

Thanks for sharing, and for the note giving me the facts of the matter. Although, I preferred the facts of the poem. did you know Hitler and Speer had a "Theory of Ruins" in regard to architecture? Buildings erected with the insight that one day historians and graffiti artists would swarm the parapets. I think, sometimes, people are constructed according to this theory. I liked the poem, it had a nice crumbly texture with a mild chalky aftertaste.

[W.k.kortas]

Dear God, man, there's a hell of a piece sitting in this commentary!

[Ken Simm.]

A write that shouts to become part of the myth. Stands so well with old Robert Z himself. Actually I prefer your part of the story.What a wonderful write. It is almost a happening in its own right.

[W.k.kortas]

I should have written it on a slab of crumbling tarmac with spray paint to truly embrace all it is, but I was never good with pigments, old friend.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Dylan would be proud!
he would love this write---i like the "cautiously" revisited...i would like to revisit Highway Route 5 in Vermont one day...and will...

it would be like reversing the car back to my childhood.

the past stalks us, while the present often gives up.