I-89 STOWE/WATERBURY (Exit 10: Route 100)

May 18, 11:00 a.m. Full Sun

 

Blasted through fifty feet of granite

to make this exit “Vermont” 

for tourists. Unless you believe,

you will not understand. What don’t 

we know? The history behind 

every opportunity. The swelled

chests of road crews so wet

their sweat drips into hot tar.

The burned shoulders, explosives, 

divorces from long days laying road.

Never mind. Your assignment is

to sew a story together. Delicate

hands, but the thread must be strong.

Your assignment is history, the Summit

House built as the Civil War broke out,

the Toll Road to the top of Mansfield

finished in 1870, the Big Hotel

that swelled across downtown,

burned to the ground in 1889.

Movement is another exit

down the road. Elsewhere, we say.

This history has snow in it and a Swedish

family in 1913 who swished through town

on long, narrow, wooden boards

with upturned ends. The locals 

took to this strange transportation,

and skiing found a home in Stowe.

This history has a moneyed glide, 

a schuss through powder, a hot 

tub view and a gold club perched high on a hillside.

Beneath it, loggers felling trees on a ski slope,

road crews with sledge hammer, pickax,

demolition dynamite. This history 

has architect upon architect drawing plans

before the plans you produce in the space

of a poem. Granite before you thought 

of granite. Granite before the dynamite 

blast, before the tourist-idea: Best 

Western Café Grill, Blush 

Hill Country Club, Stowe

Street Emporium. ATM.