Navvy

Tarmacadam

Turned my sleep

Black and pungent.

I put my hands on a shovel

In a dream

To scrape and scoop

Gravel to the tar.

High on the bucket-seat

With levers and wheels

I steered my tar-barrel way

Along the hardcore bed

Where the new road runs.

I covered the land like a lover

Laid beside her grass edges while

Burning asphalt lit the stems.

I made my passion

Foretell ecstasy and motion.

My speed drew blindness

Over her laconic eyes,

Ran its no longer gentle hand

Into the darker places of her heart.

I, the roadman,

Pushed a long way into nowhere;

I cut the sod open

Broke the ground

Parted the earth herself

For others to ride into tomorrow

Like kings.

The smell of the air

The chemical smoke upon it

The clank of track

Of rack and pinion

Cloaked the nectar of plants.

The musk of decay

Gave up its ghost

And the wind drowned

In my machinery.

© BH 2012

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A poem written in America but, to my mind, full of the road-mannies of my childhood. There is an overlaid sense of violation. Maybe I've been on too many freeways lately.

There's an illustrated version. Created December 2013. Here.