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.
