Two miles down the trail
that’s still drunk from coal dust
though the rails screamed their way
to scrap half a century since, we quit
walking calm, start skewing wild
as if those old ghost coaches come
north again from New York City
to call us barbarians in our natural
setting, before their train bucks
off the iron and barrels
in through the birches, giving
the lay anthropologists a lurch
at the lip of the cliff above
this cranberry bog where
one lake loses its legs
and crawls on its belly to climb
the back of the next.
The woods unhitch this same
way, plus give those explorers
pressing their noses to the glass
in the nineteen twenties a reason
they should want to go forward
yet still stay in their seats,
steaming toward a great
depression on a twin track
while we rattle on to our own.