Flying Over America

January's claw can't scrape the snow-dusting
on the hard crust of the long body of the land.
All of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa,

cast through the tripod of civil engineers
and surveyors, the land cut into squares,
thin strips boxed by rural routes, barb wire,

parceled and recorded at county courthouses
to be bought, sold, disputed by previous owners,
each farm and homestead locked as an Abstract

of Title inside vaults, the land itself stamped on
scrolled certificates, staked by law, stoplights
and four-way stops, but in time it won't repeat

like this from the sliver window of a jet, in time,
whatever is held in deed, trust or title, whatever
the plat reveals about the correct representation

of boundaries and all visible encroachments,
all of the feet and inches will not hold in place,
and the land, at some future date, will outshine

the scored lines and return to its original flow
and unbounded strength, nothing named, divided,
and given over to enclosures, edges, borders,

the place once more rounded by wind rustling
back from the last reaches of the world, the darkness
breathing again with the yelping of animals.

Copyright © 2007 J.P. White All rights reserved
from Green Mountains Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission