Old Road

Strange machines shave the street
down to the original brick in long
ragged paths. They’ve left it open
but no one drives this road because
it feel like driving down an open wound.

You step into it like a river, like you think
you’ll feel fish tapping past your knees.
They’ve taken up the curb so the road
runs up to a grassy bank. Down this far
you wonder what’s under your yard.
How deep down have they pressed
the past, like old cities buried up
to their spires in new earth, like layers
of ages that skirt the hollows
of ancient chapels in planes of colored dirt.

Someday soon they’ll pave it again,
but now I like to step down where the bricks
run wild red with the long claw marks
from the bright machines ripping up
the present and showing the raw, red past.