There was magic at work there, some protecting veil
I felt beyond the mobile cab, gestalt, with its felt-angelic wings
Anew, I felt safe on that bend and wind of 322.
The needle at ¾ heading back the country road
From the quiet haven of West Chester, PA, towards here:
Oh, in awed—amazed the simplicity, we both looking
Back on the other: one loquacious and I speechless,
And simple was the history—a thousand stories and I
I picked mine!—Its grantedness between the golden parallels
My incipience of joy cutting through the last dust of the silos
The thronging corn and coral-bugs celebrating me
Or is it with me, that much too.
If I had never been down yon, I feel as though I’d know your
Serpentine nostalgia all along the miles’ track
As kept as if my birthright.
Beauteous a gateway to the Juniata-home, though miles
Away from here and subject to an absent roam.
Its waves may roil ‘gainst my native door,
‘Tis this your patchwork sister on which we humans drew
That equates paths, that pining name, that road 322.
And, oh, as before I knew of thou distant eyes
Despairingly all recollections of home in the Gallery
Of Autumn fruit: plucked, transient, and rotting.
This music! Music can’t help—I hear highschool in the chords
Playing in the lyrics, transformed by my design
As meaningful, self-serving words and they all burned
And brand to home if I, if I ever can again.
But where would I go, where do wizened lines end?
Written in sullen, maddened road maps, words to that history
All my own—does it write in the river, end in the mouth?
Or the Appalachian Eden, taken on the river’s vein
To my little fall of man, a threshold barred by flaming swords
That of hate and of command, miles fatten as years accrue
Go distant past the western sun,
Down,
Down,
PA-322.