Cover the Cracks

Black tar marks scroll down

the asphalt on the Iron Horse Trail.

Like Japanese calligraphers,

two workers swooped 

across the cracks with a large pen,

pushing out more tar when they needed

letting the last dry brush strokes peter

out across the trail.

The ghost of ‘yama’ -–river—

wanders the path

the tar has sunk in.

Leaves, dust and

a broken pinecone or two

fill in the valleys.

The asphalt conceals the old

railroad line which

covered the horse trail which

covered the deer path which

covered the silt and mud which

covered the bones turned to fossils

deep beneath the asphalt trail.

Ants, near the strokes,

push up dirt on to the trail

from the tiny caverns 

they are making.

Dirt from deep down below --

fragments of wheat, oats,

manure, glass, bones.

I took a Calligraphy workshop called Text and Texture with Yukimi Annand (http://www.yukimiannand.com/yukimia/calligraphy.html) last year and have been finding calligraphy in places that I didn't imagine before.