Earthmovers roared, made a whirling progress
six days a week: a four-lane highway
to bypass our provincial town. Gone were
Traveller’s Joy, Heartsease, Love-in-Idleness.
Our wood and its narrow roadway – a lovers’
thoroughfare – severed. Only clay was left
from world’s edge to world’s end: a no-man’s-land,
a dried-up riverbed. One Sunday,
our daughter crossed the silent excavation
and, from the opposite bank, called out:
‘It’s just like the Red Sea!’ And she waved.
We acknowledged the future lovingly.
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