Main Street was furrowed,
as if a forgotten potato field was
shouldering its way back into town.
Tractor trailers bounced across with
the grace and speed of garden tractors.
Then the city arrived with its tractors,
back hoes, track-hoes, choppers, diggers.
Orange vested workers with orange cones,
hard hats and signs and shovels,
attacked the bulging blacktop rows.
One Tuesday, they squeezed us to one lane,
To the left, stop, wait, go.
One Thursday, they funneled us, bumper to butt,
To the right, stop, wait, go.
On a Monday, detoured around downtown,
hemmed in along the river road,
stop, go, stop
go, stop
go, stop sign.
(Right of way is no way to manage traffic.)
The barber wondered when they’d be done.
The cashier at the Chinese place did, too.
A patron from the coffee shop
smoked in front of the pawn shop, thinking,
“It needs to be done. Be nice when it’s done.”
Now they are done.
The hard hats and back hoes are gone.
They took the ridges with them.
Now all our cars ride like farm equipment
over a patchwork of old and new pavement,
deep black scabs on weathered gray,
just in time for winter, in time
for frost and sand and ploughs
to heave it, break it, turn it
for spring planting.
Editor’s note: Scott teaches English at the University of Maine at Presque Isle.
