Dauphin County

Wolf spiders dwindle with the poor
in Pennsylvania—
their bridgework’s been bothered
by termitic ghosts of bluegrass songs:
the place of shafts & rivers
lost. Farther down the lanes, unkempt thuja
stoop & sway, by gray clapboards
bend: the weight of those who’ve paid
their lives with the branch bones in their hands
bears witness, now, to lawn-staked names that fade
like syllables of once-important leges.