The highway snakes through the ocean of conifer trees

Through the fog-shrouded mountains, high above the sea

Where trucks and saws through the summer hum,

And fitful dreams sometimes echo with ghostly drums…

*

Sallow, amorphous faces

Drifted in from unknown places

Wait lonely, frost-bitten nights

Playing Russian roulette with each pair of approaching lights.

Dispossessed tenants who are their own rent

Paid through the nose

From meager accounts soon spent.

Trembling, sun-starved hands collecting unwritten bills;

The primeval stands of Douglas fir

Shading the stain of social ills…

*

Summer’s rude growth of reeds

Swallows, thrown from a passing van,

A black plastic bag of…old beer cans…who knows?

And a debt still owed

Contracted on the side of a Pacific road.