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| Roads | |
| I. | |
| To look at the face of a road: | |
| gravel and rocks from places unknown | |
| brought here and spread out before you; | |
| a place for your feet as they're leaving | |
| a funnel forward, you've got to push on | |
| its dagger pierces the distance. | |
| Travel its promises | |
| real or imagined, or can you tell | |
| a destination beyond the next bend | |
| behind the horizon, something you'll find. | |
| II. | |
| Kneel, let your hand grasp a pebble | |
| the color of earth, edges worn smooth: | |
| so like that first thought of leaving, | |
| comfortably fitting your hand | |
| And the world has trodden its roads | |
| since beginning of time | |
| breathlessly running from Marathon | |
| two miles more to Athens - you can't collapse yet | |
| they all led to Rome for a while, | |
| and Mecca just once in your life, | |
| then gather your cause | |
| three chances to leave: | |
| Jerusalem waits for crusaders; | |
| trek Westward to possess all that lies | |
| between a new world's two oceans, | |
| while mud freezes rockhard to two armies' boots | |
| drowning in cold and in snow | |
| where the roads to Moscow twice failed them. | |
| III. | |
| They arch to the sky, | |
| slim soaring fingers of concrete and steel | |
| pierce through the citysky haze, | |
| vaulting the pylons that bear them; | |
| upward they curve round each other in flight | |
| bridging the air, they leap to eclipse one another, | |
| while down in their shadow the freeways still dream | |
| of freedom -- | |
| of things that could still lie beyond their next bend, | |
| another horizon, still something to find. | |
| © Jon Bohrn (1998) |
