Jogging in New England

The Pilgrims hated all this sunless green
Those mosses inching up along the paths--
Ajuga, aspidistra, river fern

In ominous clumps beneath the drooping firs
Raindrops shimmering on tops of leaves
About to fall like Adam in his fragile

Paradise while stones erupted at
His feet in huge aberrant teeth. They caught
The jagged smell of pines and salty soil

With evil vapors rising in the night
To veil those others, muffling their words
And predatory steps, their dark removes.

I trot along those endless, winding roads
Remember William Bradford's fevered lines
About a dreadful wilderness, the lack

Of taverns in the woods, those natural men
Who hid behind the trees. Today it seems
Innocuous. A summer visitor

I take in miles of green, feel slightly high
On salt marsh scent. But soon I fail to read
A sign and lose the way, pick up thick noise

Along the Interstate, a moaning rush
Of eighteen-wheelers rolling into Boston
In ungainly covens carrying

Their unregenerate freight. I smell their rank
Exhaust as vapors fill the woods and drift
Toward clouds and tops of trees in acid plumes.

Suddenly I understand those words
Penned in the night by frantic, hungry saints
Their desperate prayers gasped in a dark green world
For grace to find their solitary way.

poem notes