Travel

In and out
the country towns,
under a noon sky,

the metal rivers of the ways
reflected pavements of people,
faces turned away;

on such a highway,
I veered into Heaven,
lost and out of road.

At last
I understood…

… crowds,
their seed unsown,
their diamonds uncut…

… always
behind the curve,
changing with the miles …

…everyone,
passengers, eyes drawn
to a receding world…

…every one
a stone on a hillside,
tumbling dice…

…,one final throw,
chance no longer an ally.

So, I foundered;
my misdirected journey,
begun in daylight,
had ended in the night

but, even in darkness,
the grass was green,
the light to see by,
in my eyes,

where it had always been.

© BH, 2021

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I’ve always been partial to travelling; the going from one place to another and the changes expected and unexpected that travelling brings.

Sometimes it’s been about riving, that resource-hungry past-time dragging humans across the face of the planet in waves. Commuting like a tide. And the roads and landscapes cut in pieces by them. The bodies thrust into going and coming… I begin to think of it as a kind of madness - of which bewilderment, catatonia, and squandered time - are all symptoms.

We ride the turbulence, thinking we are above it but it creeps into our very being. We think we are immune but we are mesmerised, randomised, missiles in a war of profit and distance.

We think we have to do it and that the roads are leading us somewhere important. We think without such direction we cannot make sense of the world as we hurtle through it.

No. We are blinded by a blur of passing landscape. We have no eyes to speak of. We think there is no light except our beaming headlights.