Gone are the sunburned boys,

the men with sagging belly dancers

on their heavy chests,

and their arms

skin and ink testimonies

to girls also long gone.

This ghosts back to me,

like an abandoned poem,

as I drive a wedge of highway

I helped pour: my sweat ran

with that of men’s whose

waking hours hinged

on the quiet nod of the sun.

Once, a young foreman

pushing for production

platooned the fleet

too soon after a rain.

The dump trucks roared in mire,

mastodons trapped in a tar pit.

Now, all seems

more distant than miles.

The only words: Madison Avenue scroll

the length of a hilltop,

ensconced phrases without rhythm

in rural Missouri —

a scar that will not form.