| OCR Text |
Show Hi An Abandoned Claim Where the old road forks, a cutoff from a cutoff, you can see the scar where they gashed the mountain's flank conveniently level. The vertical bank peels as rain and frost and gravity bury the blank rectangle of the tunnel under a shower of quartzite and soil, under rubble and uprooted maples as the cutbank falls to an angle of sleep, the perspective of long dreams. The last owner cursed it as worthless, "Never got a damn cent out for all I put in." He winched the iron dump-car from its rusty track, hauled it to the valley, painted it blue, planted it full of marigolds. The old road fills, year by year, with sapling maple, blueberry elder, nettle, houndstongue, thistle, faded leaves, snow. Hidden behind the raw slope, the buried entrance, timber frames shine with groundwater, moulder with faint phosphorescence, moan and crash under blocks of released stone, (cont.) |
