to make a highway pretty’s
been a problem since appius claudius cæcus
decided to move rome’s legions
faster, farther, and more efficiently
in all these years—nay, millennia—
of pavement engineering
only romans themselves
solved the highway beautification problem
with a landscaping program
the dead would be planted
along the shoulder of the appian way—
perennials for everyone to see
for the rich, broad-shouldered,
single-eyebrowed mausoleums;
middle classes rested, if not chicly,
then tastefully, in sprawling columbaria
kept garden fresh by slaves
later sown into potter’s fields
a hundred thousand miles of memoria
erase the eyesore of interstate,
four- and two-lane,
divided, undivided, turning-lane,
soft- and hard-shouldered,
urban and rural highway
behind guardrails,
perhaps even holding them up,
gravestones, urns, crosses,
wreaths, stars of david, mausoleums,
vases, crescent moons,
bronze baby booties, photos behind glass
gone the need to plant
to plow to mow to send
no need for men in orange suits
to pluck ballooned shopping bags from bushes
to stuff sun-faded wreaths
into black plastic bags
