Wednesday, February 28, 2024

The Bike Path

 

Every dead end in town

Bumps up against it,

In a clutter of sheds,

Old gravel, and dogs.

It must, I suppose,

Have been a railway embankment,

At least where it rises

Over the baseball field.

 

Farther on, bad land protects it –

A waste of scrub, a forbidding stretch of marsh –

And a single birch hovers

Over a lonely pond,

Where a bench is dedicated

To someone’s memory.

 

We call it the bike path,

But mostly we walk it,

Ambling between

Two sleepy twin towns,

And mumbling a greeting

When we pass each other –

A dim little signal

Between separate solitudes.

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