What if This Road

Andrew Wyeth, "Loden Coat"

What if This Road

What if this road, that has held no surprises

these many years, decided not to go

home after all; what if it could turn

left or right with no more ado

than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin

were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,

that is shaken and rolled out, and takes

a new shape from the contours beneath?

And if it chose to lay itself down

in a new way; around a blind corner,

across hills you must climb without knowing

what’s on the other side; who would not hanker

to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know

a story’s end, or where a road will go?

Sheenagh Pugh

“What if?” But it isn’t really a question as much as an inevitability. The road will change. It will take us to unexpected places. It will not look like we remembered. Sometimes we will feel lost. And even if right now the road is as it has been for a long, long time, it might suddenly change, and that’s unsettling. The way this poem takes that sense of uncertainty, of helplessness even (a kite-tail?), and makes it into a challenge – “ Who would not hanker to be going, at all risks?” -  is such a clever turn-around. If only we always had this strength of mind, to see beyond the changing topography, to the thread that runs beneath. To turn our fear into wonder, our agitation to excitement, knowing that the thread will always lead us home.