I have back roads I take to places like the hospital
where night pain is never tended enough.
But I can drive under the over lacing bowels
of wineglass, elm, oak, maple.
From mosquito ville to Wells River,
along the double track with the greened hump,
the slope with the great sugar grove.
New age talk calls it visualizing.
But I know under torture I would travel from the West Burnett
burying ground to Joe's Brook by heart.
I know all of those roads by heart.
By heart I know what and all I have left behind.