Mending Roads (Poem)
Mending Roads
(With Apologies to Mr. Frost)
Some thing there is that loves a silent bike.
That sends the warm baked asphalt rolling under.
And spills our rainbow skins into the sun.
And makes gaps in traffic two can pass abreast.
The work of busy traffic is another thing.
I have come after it in nails and glass,
And found it filled with hasty horns and scowls.
It would have the winded winter scarf unmasked,
And let our rubber tires be broiled by summer sun,
And let us lose momentum to its stops.
The stops are everywhere. We saw and heard them made.
But at road mending time we left them there.
Instructions meant to safely guide us on,
Now testament to how we live alone.
I let my fellow driver know upon the hill,
And a on a day we meet to watch the lights.
They turn from red to green in lockstep law,
And he is all fumes. I am all angry sweat.
We set the road between us once again,
In strong white lines and rumbled strips.
To each the haste that has fallen to each.
And some roads are ice and others barren rocks.
We have to use a spell to make them work.
“You stay in your lane, and I will stay in mine!”
He only says that fast roads make easy pace.
And I comply that speed is all my manor.
But pedaling is the mischief in me,
And I ask him, “Does it really?”
Are we so hurried from this get and spend,
That we are blind to how the hours are stolen
From marching one against the other on our way?
Something there is that doesn’t love a road.
Not one that goes from here to there.
Not one that takes the child to school or play,
But one that stretches hearts on drying racks of stop, and stall, and glare.
And when I say let’s fix this thing beneath us,
He only says “okay” to build a private fence between our roads.
Around his house, his schools, his jogging paths,
Now I must ride for miles to make my meet.
And I say let’s build a way with cars all obsolete,
And make the nature trails to take me fast abroad.
And when I say that surely this is even worse,
We take comfort in the closing of the other’s way,
And says to each in that old and bitter phrase,
Good roads inside good fences make good neighbors.
James Thompson