beware the bulldozer whim

beware our whims   

we remake the world for our convenience,

and I do love a great highway
with hills bulldozed down and valleys filled,

and I do love pavement and bridges,

and malls and cities can enable much of what we want,

yet today I again savor an old sled road, now a trail,
that found the way the earth most easily allows,
I slip up the hollow and along the ridges
with gentle gain and loss, a marriage of way and land,


 





they who made this way must have loved the land
and caressed it with the sinuous snake of a sled road,
as if together person and land dance,

often we can reduce plant, animal, and land
to but things we shape, or discard, at our whim,

the bulldozer is a mighty tool,
we should beware the power we can feel
when we forget to limit our whims.

by Henry H. Walker
December 5, ’12