Glimpse of Terrain


One kind of logic is a road cut into the side of a steep, wooded hill.
Its engineering makes travel of several kinds possible.
The road describes itself
(From a train I saw the profile
Of road and hill, the hill without the road
Covered with trees and rocks,
With dirt and leaves and fossil histories,
And the road set out from plan, graded from point to point,
A doubled yellow line curving with it,
Its asphalt smooth and banked efficiently,
Following every degree of the built bed).
It does not describe the hill.