Poetic Sojourn
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  • Sojourn of Days
  • The Circle
  • Reign
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  • The Value of Nothing
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  • Depends What Your Definition of Is Is
  • Dose
  • Realitease
  • Karma Collisions
  • Hole
  • A Christmas Thought
  • Psychedelic Tsunami
  • Through a Glass Darkly
  • The Laborer of Word
  • Drop It
  • The Dream So Real the Dream Surreal
  • To My One Tender in Years
  • Mystery One
  • Brain Cell
  • Parade of Souls
  • My Love, My Damnation, My Savior
  • I Try to Always Remember that When I Go, I Will Arrive
  • Images of Nothing
  • So What?
  • Eclipse
  • Matter Over Mind (an end to a means)
  • Your Apocalypse Beckons
  • This Is NOT a Poem
  • Give It Up! (take it back)
  • Hi, how are you?
  • Die to Live
  • A Volitive Prey
  • Can Anyone Remember?
  • My Strict Headmaster
  • I AM not here
  • I Do Not Write Poetry
  • True North
  • The Wilderness
  • Seek
  • reGenesis
  • Tense Past
  • Blaze
  • Parallel Universes
  • and the smallest among you shall have power over you
  • The Write I Dance
  • un
  • Lament
  • Idiot Prayer
  • Free Will
  • live death life
  • this ol' dawg won't hunt
  • Soul Solitaire
  • fool's gold
  • Cant
  • the daydream
  • au fait
  • Decryption
  • The Seasons of The Dream
  • Sunday symptoms (hangover Haiku)
  • nowhere man in a nowhere land
  • fly in a jar
  • Stand
  • blank
  • This Island
  • a day for our darling
  • the guest
  • a moment of mere days
  • the age of digital scribblers
  • the playgrounds of compensation
  • On This Benevolent Day
  • Anger Management
  • if it's all about me, it's gotta be you
  • dream of the mayfly
  • of the essence
  • You Spin Me Right Round
  • onmaligned
  • Predators
  • listening
  • who would say Truth is hate?
  • Poet's Paradox
  • Occupy Yourself
  • The Road
  • a shot in the arm rarely tickles, cod liver oil never tasted sweet and I ain't yo damn bunny rabbit
  • let there be whatever
  • Poetry
  • in the still of the write
  • Of the World but Not In It
  • I was not
  • The Poem of Life
  • Traveler's Haiku
  • the weight of years
  • this phantom span
  • life's too short
  • there are no lions of convenience
  • days on pensive wing

The Road

you are standing in the middle of a road
it's common knowledge
that since the completion of its construction,
no vehicle has ever traversed this road
 
in the nearby village and surrounding area,
talk has always been that
no one has ever driven anything
down this road and unless walking,
to stay away because of its hazards
 
in fact, the road is often the butt of jokes
because of the difficulties it presents
for ease of travel and the wisdom of anyone driving it
certainly it is not an easy road and even though
it will take you to a definite destination,
it appears unlikely you'll get there unscathed
 
this is because it revolves around a precipitous fall
of a torrent diverted there pursuant to its course
 
this descent impacts with a deafening din
it shakes the earth all around
and kicks up a shrouding fog
in the mist of its voluminous rage
so dense all you can smell
is its suffusion thick in the air
 
You can hardly see your hand,
if stretched out to arm's length,
let alone see to drive with anything
but trust that those who made and keep
this road
will have it take you where you want to be
 
while standing there, you see a man
emerge from the fog walking along side
this road
he shouts to you as he walks past
"you better get out from the middle of the road
because a large truck is making its way down
and you're going to get squashed like a bug!"

you wave him off and dismiss him
safe in all that common knowledge
has ever told you.
the man,
stumbling along the side of the road
as he walks,
fades away in the fog
 
you can see no truck
you can't hear any truck
you cannot even contrast a truck's
vibration of the road
you can't smell exhaust or fumes
​
all you can derive from your senses
and all you've ever read, been told
and experienced of this road
presumes that either this lone man knows nothing
of what he speaks
or is attempting to make you
like the fool
what would the villagers say?
 
besides, it's much more difficult to walk the narrow
passage off to the side with all its obstacles
than the wide, smooth expanse
of the middle as has been the custom
 
you will decide what you do
you will not decide what happens
Picture
Written by Scott Schoffstall
© October 15, 2011
all rights reserved
http://www.poeticsojourn.com/the-sojourner.html
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