MEMORY LANES
Once again in summer
where prairie blacktop ribbons
over Saskatchewan’s slow rolling hills
past grazing cow and half grown grain
driving on the road I helped to build
back when I was eighteen teen
five hundred years and yesterday ago
hauling asphalt to the spreader
in a truck hot dirty and mean
and eating steak for breakfast
with men of tar and grit
Still with a smile
each time we pass
a road crew at their work
The odor, odious
to you and almost all,
as sweet to me as youth
and lilac in the wind