Every now and then

I wake up in the middle of the night and have something on my mind that must be written down. Once in a really great while, it's something like a poem. I usually don't share them, but whatthehell.

The Road

“I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.”

So wrote Narihara. Or at least that’s how Rexroth translated him.

But “choose,” I think, rather than “take.”

Because the roads we are on,
Together, or alone,
Curling up a mountain,
Rushing headlong across a plain,
Circling back,
Diverging,
Intersecting,
We have chosen.

Frost lamented the road not taken.
McLean, at his crossroads, sings
“All roads lead to where I stand,
And I believe I’ll walk them all
No matter what I may have planned.”

We choose. And the roads follow us.

Friday, December 17, 2004