So like a harrow-pin

I hear harness-creaks and the click

of stones in a ploughed-up field.

But it was the age of steam

at Eagle Pond, New Hampshire,

when this rusted spike I found there

was aimed and driven in

to fix a cog on the line.

It flakes like dead maple leaves

in the track of the old railway,

eaten at and weathered

like birch stumps dressed by beavers.

What guarantees things keeping

if a railway can be lifted

like a long briar out of ditch-growth?

I felt I had come on myself

in its still, grassed-over path

where I drew the iron like a thorn

or a dialect word of my own

warm from a stranger’s mouth.

And the sledge-head that drove it

with a last opaque report

deep into the creosoted

sleeper, where is that?

And it sweat-cured, polished haft?

Ask those ones on the buggy,

inaudible and upright

and sped along without shadows.