Here I am in Tupelo, Mississippi, and the scene out back is of a lonely road grader sitting on a newly-created expanse of dirt. Someday there will be a majestic, paved road for people to use; for now it is a piece of land in a state of roadway purgatory.

Only over time could it possibly return to what it was. Only in time - perhaps as soon as tomorrow! - will it achieve its true calling.

I wondered, thus, has anyone written a poem about the humble road grader, tiller of land to make America move all the more faster?

You bet! Check this out:

Scavenging the Wall
by R. T. Smith

When fall brought the graders to Atlas Road,
I drove through gray dust thick as a battle
and saw the ditch freshly scattered with gravel.

Leveling, shaving on the bevel, the blade
and fanged scraper had summoned sleepers—
limestone loaves and blue slate, skulls of quartz

not even early freeze had roused. Some rocks
were large as buckets, others just a scone
tumbled up and into light the first time

in ages. Loose, sharp, they were a hazard
to anyone passing. So I gathered
what I could, scooped them into the bed

and trucked my freight away under birdsong
in my own life’s autumn. I was eager
to add to the snaggled wall bordering

my single acre, to be safe, to be still
and watch the planet’s purposeful turning
behind a cairn of roughly balanced stones.

Uprooted, scarred, weather-gray of bones,
I love their old smell, the familiar unknown.
To be sure this time I know where I belong

I have brought, at last, the vagrant road home.

Hat tip: Poetry Magazine