Front Lines

The edge of the cancer

Swells against the hill—we feel

A foul breeze –

And it sinks back down.

The deer winter here.

A chainsaw growls in the gorge.

Ten wet days and the log trucks stop,

The trees breathe.

Sunday the 4-wheel jeep of the

Realty Company brings in

Landseekers, lookers, they say

To the land,

Spread your legs.

The jets crack sound overhead, it’s OK here;

Every pulse of the rot at the heart

In the sick fat veins of Amerika

Pushes the edge up closer –

A bulldozer grinding and slobbering

Slideslipping and belching on top of

The skinned-up bodies of still-live bushes

In the pay of a man

From town.

Behind is a forest that goes to the Arctic

And a desert that still belongs to the Piute

And here we must draw

Our line.

-- Gary Snyder