dead tree green
with poison ivy
sugar maples self-grafting
like circus freaks
a black birch wearing
a hollow locust tree like a coat
these are among
the unsettling attractions
at the Allegheny Portage Railroad
National Historic Site
a monument to the great unsettling
of the American West
but what’s bitter in the morning
may be sweet by afternoon
i drink hot tea from a thermos mug
like an offering to the heat
staying one pace ahead
of my cloud of insects
though i stop for everything:
the man-made cliffs
dripping with native plants
the detours to peer
at old stone culverts
the interpretive signs
slowly being reinterpreted
by age and weather
preservation and transformation
are dance partners here
foundations are buried
for their protection says a sign
with a photo of the little we’re missing
in black and white
meanwhile the bumblebees
are making love to yellow touch-me-nots
Bombylius major pokes his pointy snout
deep into a lobelia
and a mother leads two teenagers
on a sullen walk for their health
now we are beginning
to get somewhere i think
as an alarmed pickerel frog
disappears into his puddle
and although one might wish
for less proximity to a highway
the trees are old and strange
and i am in my element
no longer on the way to elsewhere
people choose to live here in the hills
our journeys are local
our histories are brief
a sign exhorts us to leave
no trace
August 25, 2023