Beside Remains

All along the lazy C&O Canal
are feats of wow, stupendous,
engineering: here the great Chain Bridge,
supported only by chains!
Here is a granite slab, the Inclined
Plane, lifting laden boats from perhaps the
World’s Largest Ditch
and better (a manmade river)
into what by comparison is a sea —
but, surely, cartographically explored,
laid bare by lithographs’
True Representation.

Beneath the trail, the wilderness breathes its mists
up to Great Falls, “prettiest place around these parts”
and down to the bustling city (at that time
barely paved) where a golden dome
flares out a welcome to Farmers and Mechanics
who’d empeople this new world.

What remains beside today
gives equal cause for wonder:
over the Iron Bridge, a
sturdy trestle, I saw an eight-point buck bound into view
then spring-clamber down the hill
(my velocipede, invention of 1869, too fast
for comfort).

What is changed is:
he knew I would not eat him,
nor did I eye the trees in which he swam
like a dark fish as lumber. Though the sewage
poured in the rain through tunnels made of brick
(laid when my great grandfather was a boy)
beneath them bored a slow, silent machine
ruminating rock, digging a
straight
line: I will feel old
to see it emerge, besides.

When we grow old
we praise the young for doing basic things
because those are hard work: by dint only
of perseverance we finish, half-
stupefied from tackling simple tasks:
a grid that will not lie flat (for instance)
or two colors (only)
that will
not mix.

But despairing as we look round,
the work is done:

the city full,
the wilderness beside it,
too,
complete.

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