Litter

Litter 9/11/2010
The hard work of men is spread out in black
across the highways of our nation,
a great itinerant expanse of track
spreading like veins across America.

Bearing the weight of lumber and wheat
and families traveling home,
tired souls and weary feet
home across the mountains and plains of America.

A great web of cars leading nieces to aunts
and husbands to wives after rainy business trips,
like the stage of civilization's uniting dance,
uniting us, America.

And the laziness of men is spread out beside
this achievement of better men.
Beer cans and plastic tossed there belie
the character of the people of America.

They quietly mock the sweat-earned road
and the very ground on which they lie.
They mock the land which, bought with blood,
Somehow looks less than America.