Look down, friend: there is a road at your feet.
It has always been there with you, even before you screamed.
It is built of memories that accrete,
of lies, loves, and debts that accrue, of joys and fears you’ve dreamed.
Look down, friend: there is a road at your feet.
It runs onward to pierce the distant sky,
Calling you out beyond your sight, beyond where you are bound,
not swiftly, as the wind-blown ravens fly,
but slowly forward, right-left-right, a rhyme of soles and ground.
Look down, friend: there is a road at your feet.
It might be made of dust and grey gravel,
crunching like deep mid-winter snow under your thoughtful stride,
stretching out to take you as you travel
wherever you have asked to go along its crushed rock tide.
Look down, friend: there is a road at your feet.
Or maybe it is asphalt, pocked and patched
and melting in the summer heat beneath the sun’s abuse,
its crazed repair lines feeling so well matched
to your threadbare heart, where each beat might finally break things loose.
Look down, friend: there is a road at your feet!
Perhaps it’s an ambling foot-worn track,
bent blades of grass and trammeled dirt winding through the world’s songs,
urging you onward through a coming back
to self in steps that ease your hurt and walk away the wrongs.
Look down, friend: there is a road at your feet.
It has always been there with you, even before you screamed.
