A center stripe on such a road would be no more than affectation,
The prospect of two vehicles on the same stretch of this blacktop
Which ambles from nowhere to nowhere, old logging path
Morphed into a convenience for fishermen or bird watchers
Heading to the odd bits of Adirondack Park land
Scattered higgeldy-piggeldy in its path
All but a mathematical impossibility.
Indeed, the fog lines are barely visible, a series of dots and dashes
Along the crumbling berm of the shoulders,
And the signs testifying to the calamitous curves ahead
Are faded and pock-marked
In testament to generations of pellet-gun marksmanship
And twelve-ounce projectiles.
There remain the odd traces of the byway’s former usefulness:
Rusted blades or unevenly-spoked wheels
Left behind by ancient logging outfits,
The odd abandoned hunting camp, and here and there,
Visible through gaps in thick, ancient stands of pine
(Having outlasted the original settlers and logging concerns
Through the sheer stubborn implacability of biology),
You might see an anomalous abandoned bus up on blocks,
And there are those who have sworn they have seen them
Adorned with curtains in the windows,
But that is most certainly a trick of the light,
A mis-apprehension of something half-glimpsed
By the drivers as they sped by.