Along Highway 61

Along Highway 61
By Mike Bonikowsky

Bring up the jackhammer of the Lord
And find a cleft to set the chisel
For nothing’s ever grown here
And the highway’s coming through. 

But if the bit can’t find a purchase
On my metamorphic heart
Bring up the drills of heaven
And get straight to boring down.

Fill your holy boreholes
With your sacred high explosive
Set to blow the living hell
Out of my rock-hard heart.

Strip my false and alloyed self
Of its so-called precious metal
Leave me an exhausted quarry
Hollowed and open to the sky

Then strike the labor camps
Let return the northern silence
Call the lichens back to grow
On the broken fragments of the shield

Call your thunderheads across the lake
Call your springs up from beneath
Fill my wound with cold clean waters
Waters still and dark and deep.

Come make of my blessed hollow
A place where creatures drink their fill
A place where children swim and play
When the land is hot and dry.

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Mike Bonikowsky
Poet & Personal Support Worker

Photography by Daniel Bultedaob