In fading light this peristaltic stream of steel,
smelted, formed, numbered and sealed,
hunches along the gray-green coast,
plastered—land, man, and machine—in signs
that have long since ceased to signify.
First is the thing. Second is its being seen.
Third is the urge to tag the beast, to try for a better look
from the top of the mountain across the veiled thin ridges;
to visit again the named ravine,
and say the words that fasten all these to our world.
Surrounded by a blur of images and sounds,
and self-absorbed, we can fail the names.
And then what are they worth, these creations,
these evolutions and inventions, these links, these bridges?
How can they last, unremarked—and what use are we?
That silent, falling tree, the smile of the shrew,
the frantic lashing of laundry in the darkening squall:
How can we fasten ourselves in our world
unless we watch and name it all:
Niantic. Basking shark. Juniper. Hex-headed lag screw.
As I speed the freezing rises of this road,
cut, in places, straight through stone,
I say names as they flicker through the mind:
Eisenhower. Glendower. Light and Power. Toblerone.
The jagged shadows jut ahead, the sun behind gutters its last,
and I want to know the name, and how the name came,
of everything that stutters past.
~~~~~~~~~~
Douglas Logan
"Turnpike in Winter" appeared in the Connecticut River Review in 2004.
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