Ken Poyner - One Poem

The Journey

We are not going down that road.

We have other places to be,

Other appointments, and I have

No idea where that one-way

Street ends.  Look at it:

No lights, no traffic, nothing

But weather.  Clouds and no doubt

Rain.  We are better off

With our highway, curbs,

And a posted speed limit.  Old,

Weathered roads are not efficient.

They end suddenly, go

Unexpected places, hold few

Chances to turn back.  They

Were built by men who hauled things:

Wagons of grief and industry.

Good men, surely; but not wise

In the way of roads, the wickedness

Of going.  It is not their fault.

After all, the architect of Hell

Was a just and merciful God,

Or simply God.  Every so often

A road made by men is going

To stray, to cut itself off from its

Fellow roads and go in particular

No place.  I’ll not take such a road.

I’ll not calculate that the desolation

Will cease so many miles hence

And the land turn resistant green again.

I see a road for what it is.

Travel.  Transit and traffic

And the sound of an engine:

An engine

Enfolded in the brightly sharp ordinary,

The wheel in my hands, the pedals

Useless without me, and a known

Landscape running commonly, precisely past.

Get in.

It is time to leave.

Ken Poyner’s four collections of flash and four of speculative poetry can be found at all the usual places.  He is married to a world class female power lifter and lives with several rescue cats and betta fish in a dreary townhome development.  He is a retired information systems warrior.