This Road

This road, it is a river,

A vein cut in the earth,

That marries destinations

And separates the hurt.

They're endless, all these rivers,

That cross and intertwine.

More than just the distance spanned,

They bridge the depth of time.

So many sail these rivers,

Such dreams and hopes and lives,

So many stories never told,

So many paths untried.

For most, roads are for travel,

A route from here to home,

For empty hearts, there is no hearth,

So endlessly, we roam.

There is a pause at sunrise,

At sunset comes again,

When travel seems... a weary thing

To face without a friend.

Our feet, they feel the longing

– The trav'lers humble greed –

To slide across the threshold,

Have filled the boundless need.

But time is lost in longing

And waste is found in dreams.

Better just to take our roads

And leave what cannot be.

I came across this as an unfinished poem. Looking at the last-edited date, I wrote it almost exactly six years ago today. The funny thing is, as I reread it, I realized that the section I had works perfectly fine as it is. So, here it is.

My Mom used to tell me — quite frequently — that writing poems can work similarly to keeping a journal. You have this collection of emotions and moments you can look back on and remind yourself of where you have been — a travel log of sorts.

Today, I both am and am not the man who wrote this poem. I've stopped my wandering, though a part of me is always waiting for the moment I find out I missed the memo; that I'm the guest who has overstayed his welcome. It's the part of me that holds an unshakeable suspicion, whenever I find a feeling of home, that those around me have mistaken me for someone else, and I'll be found out and unwelcomed in short order.

And that part of me will forever hold sympathy for the man who wrote this poem, sitting with his cats in a small room in southern Indiana, about to find out in a couple months that his job had been downsized.

He was about a year from the final confirmation — the memo he had missed — that the long drawn-out separation with his wife would never end in reconciliation. He was also about a year from a pretty excellent backpacking trip with his oldest and dearest friend, the trip that served as his impetus to "Get up and drive on," as the Army had taught him.

He was just a bit more than a year from a ridiculous, frozen camping trip in the middle of January — it was "in tents" in every punny sense of the phrase — with another friend who he didn't know he'd never see again, and from his move, a few days later, to the other side of the country.

There is too much in this world for the brain to understand. I think the heart makes songs and art and poetry to try to make up for the lack of comprehension. Maybe poems are a bit like dreams, an effort by less-conscious parts of the mind to work on formulas and calculations we lack all the pieces to actually figure out.

Still, where I am now, that humble greed has planted my feet firmly on the indoor side of the threshold — the warm side, the home side, the "people who will miss you" side.

I will always love the romance of the wandering, but I do not miss it.