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) |