Day 2 #Napowrimo - Laying Down to Waste

Here's day two of National Poetry Month. You can find the prompt I used here.

Laying Down to Waste 

When it rained (which was (almost) everyday), 

the gravel road flowed like a river of mud; 

all the bits of fine rock washed away into the creek bed. 

What would be left was hard packed earth, boulders 

rounding out of the road like animal heads rearing, 

nudging the air. Born from the waste of the storm. 

Streaks of clay, like veins of blood connected them 

like a map. And I would walk, regardless of the wet 

dampening my socks and sneakers or mud kicking up 

on my pants. I would walk on the washed road beneath 

the canopy of leaning trees. I would brush by the shoulders 

of ferns and the bushes of sal al. My youth filled with acres, 

evergreens, lush and wet, dense forest. I knew it better 

than the city folk knew the cracks in their sidewalks 

or the flicker of the street light down the avenue. 

And even now that I live in the city, I still listen 

for the hoot of the owl or the rustle of racoon; 

I open my window, I open my ears, but all I hear 

is the roar of I-5, the sound of tires rushing 

against the gray barriers of the freeway. I cannot 

smell the resin of the cedars or redwoods rising; 

only the burn of asphalt. The laying down of tar, 

in the early morning. The men at work, hands 

clad in leather gloves, their signs that say yield. 

Yield the trees into wood chips; lay down 

the roots of bitumen; sow the fields with concrete; 

open the maw of mud and flatten it with machines. 

Not the rain, but a flood could wash all of it away.