I know how it was in that time
sixty years ago when roads seen
from above were little more than
two thin tracks through grass.

My mind has heard the noiseless roads
cutting unfenced fields, passing cherry groves,
skirting steepest hills and flat lakes,
making settled burgs where roads cross.

I know how it was in that time
when many-handed harvests,  
sweet smells and back breaking work
were wrenched away without referendum.

Wrenched away by Ford's cast iron.
Wrenched away without option of staying
to enjoy the scale of day-long trips
on foot, in wagon or buggy.  

Our innocent grandfathers too,
wrenched away, not unwillingly, from plowfields,
to be told by newspaper and newfangled radio  
of the one-day Atlantic crossing.

I know how it was in that time.
I've seen it from three or five hundred feet;
the quick shadow and lake-mirrored
image of fabric covered wood and wire.

I've gently flown, pocketa, pocketa,
in that time; in a ship as much a product
of those shifting decades as of its tinkerer/
designer, builder, pilot, Pietenpol.

Do you mean the ones who live on the other side?
Clear across the ocean, two miles in from the tide?

The ones that live with little means or the ones that live like we were meant to?
That work, play, stress, fear, and cry, just like we do?

The men who were created from the earth and the women from Adam's rib?
The ones who fall asleep staring at the same galaxies wondering if we're all there is?

Do you mean the ones in straw houses near dirt roads?
That learn how to survive on the land and wear the clothes that they sew?

Others and me,
I'm sorry, pardon me... I'm just slightly confused
Because when I think of them, I think of me
I can't separate the two.

How do I hate thee? I cannot count the ways.
That you are a clueless, narcissistic proto-fascist
Are words so true
They make me rue
That I’d not the durst
To use them first.
But here are a few
That well  may be new
To vilipend you.

You move limacine-like
Into the nasty netherworld
Of  our national nuttiness
Spinning whigmaleeries
That you prompt gailliardese
Among those not yet dead of brain.

You are a *******, a blatherskite,
And a fanforan.

So How do I hate thee?
With the breath,
Smiles, tears,
Of all my life,
And if Fate choose,
I shall but hate thee greater
After death.

- Dan Wick