Front Lines

FRONT LINES

For weeks now the old men rise 

to the summons of Cat machinery 

and shuffle down their long driveways 

to linger by the mailbox, discussing progress

and then everything else as the county 

digs up the road to lay a sewer line. Somewhere

far from here, rat studies have shown 

that if you isolate a sample from the control

for long enough they will develop, 

out of sheer, sinewy resilience, a dialect 

all their own, refusing to be disposed. 

At the mailbox the old mens’ stories 

click into place like the faded clichés 

on the church signs. If the world will be saved

it will not be in a lab or at the asphalt end

of a main road but in the slow, gravel

stories of the left behind, unwound 

right under the long nose of the developers

in a language they forced on us

and could never understand.