poem – Nicole Roy

I set out across the land
Knowing not where I would stop
Settling with unease each night along the way
A route through brambled undertuff
The stars to light my way

The heat of days
The salt-crust red of skin
Dust and callus hands beridged

I found along my arc through deepest steamcrossed plain
A field girded round with wire rusted, barbed in vain
No longer were the cattle bound within its mesh
Flesh had long ago made way for sun bleached scaffolding
The beat of many rays

The rhythm found
I trudged along
Not asking what to seek

The time would come when I laid down
To rest of that was sure
Parameters for marking home
Elusive as the dew

Thirst of days
No water found
Heat and ache and nothing new

Then one night, under the stars
I cast my thoughts adrift
Found peace in looking up at them
Felt rain within my chest

The world still looked the same, but it was different
He walked from the gym, back to where he parked his car
There were still cars here, and people, dirt and beauty
He could smell the bar-b-que cooking down the street

It was the same old world, but the underpinnings of it had been replaced in the night
Everyone was talking to themselves – no, they were talking to thin air
But the thin air was everyone else

The old rules faded into the background, burning away like ground fog at 6 o’clock on a sunny spring morning

The guts of the plane had been changed while the plane was in flight
The re-tooling of the world system had taken place before anything could have been done

At every point on the curve, it looks like the curve is going straight up from here
But things still seem pretty normal

Tag: poem

Journey