ALONG THE ROAD POEMS...

Cemetery on Sam Hill in Worthington, Massachusetts

For many years, I have written "Along the Road..." poems.  They fit my belief of life being a journey and how we make our own paths by walking, traveling, moving along roads, unexpected or well-worn, throughout our earthly days. 

This past year I lost my way.  For many reasons the road disappeared.  I wandered, wondered and only now edge back to the page to find the words that ground me. 

Along the road in twenty-sixteen,

I somehow lost my way.

Lost my writing, lost my time,

lost my lovely wayward moments.

I wandered through snowy mountains,

 mud and soft Caribbean sands.

Snapped and trapped in the corporate gulag,

one cold Hell and back again.

Write that I lost my father,

thin like leather, gasping for breath

in the downstairs room on Trouble Street

 where breezes carried him birdsong

and the sent of early summer flowers.

* 

In that dry year of twenty-something,

all the bad times re-exploded.

Tell how I lost my temper, flawed

goodwill and old illusions.

Say I still taste the sorrow, 

droning on harsh winter winds.

The soldier sheltering his trauma,

the girl on-guard, alert to fear.

One war ends in wounded peace,

where the grass is ever-greener, 

along the writing road, 

lost in dreams and should-have-beens, 

thick with gifts and demons.