Landmark

The road wound back among the hills of mind
Rutted and worn, in a wagon with my father
Who wore a horsehide coat and knew the way
Toward home, I saw him and the tree together.

For me now fields are whirling in a wheel
And the spokes are many paths in all directions,
Each day I come to crossroads after dark
No place to stay, no aunts, no close connections.

Calendars shed their leaves, mark down a time
When chrome danced brightly. The roadside tree is rotten,
I told a circling hawk, widen the gate
For the new machine, a landmark’s soon forgotten.

You say the word, he mocked, I’m used to exile.
But the furrow’s tongue never tells the harvest true,
When my engine saw had redesigned the landscape
For a tractor’s path, the stump bled what I knew.