Confined egress
Narrow field of view
Yield to oncoming traffic
Move ahead
Nonetheless
Patience and tenacity
Against the grain
Of resistance
Light beyond
Illumines new roads
Suggests possibilities
Category: Poetry
The Straight Path
The master told her students
This is the path to enlightenment
“But it is so straight”, one replied
True, said the master
“I expected the path to be difficult!”
The straight path is difficult
“How can it be?
There are no mountain passes to find!
No intersections or forks to choose from!
No sharp curves to negotiate!”
Many students nodded their agreement
The master shook her head
The straight path is difficult because
You want to climb mountains
You expect there to be many paths to choose from
You believe there should be sharp changes in direction
One student had sat quietly through all this
Listening while looking straight down the long path
As far as she could see
Finally, she spoke
“Walking the straight path is impossible
For one who seeks insight
From every roadside attraction”
The master smiled
I am your student!
Peaks and Valleys
From peak to valley
He tumbled
A pebble
In the tumultuous runoff
Of his own emotions
Finally released
In the awakening spring
After a long, cold winter
Of isolated dissociation
He lay there
For a while
In the rocky bed
His torrent gouged
Through valley floor
Then stood
Shook off pain
Shouldered the burden
Of recovery
So began the work
To break new trail
Back to the peaks
Sundown ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #351
Prairie sundown
Raises me up
The peace of a gentle end
Subdues the day’s winds
To scattered breezes
Playing in tall grass
Painted ambient amber
I breathe in
With a rush like the wind
Then out as a breeze
While the brazen sky
Sings the final notes
Of its golden lullaby
Sun Chaser
Old asphalt beckons
Straight run to the mocking sun
Catch me if you can
Getting Over Canola
Prairie crossings
Keeping time
With the endless swag
Of powerlines
Skimming along
The road unreels
Mile after mile
O’er canola fields
Intersections
And railway lines
Break the monotone
With highway signs
This poem’s kinda wonky
Now that’s a fact
But canola‘s tough to work with
I wish it was flax
Grain Bins
Dotting the landscape
Checkers on a checkerboard
Harvest time: King Me!
Gravel Grid
I traverse the plain on a gravel grid
Left turns, right turns, always perpendicular
A jagged diagonal cutting from highway to highway
Beneath cerulean and cirrus
Six tires kick up dust so fine
It infiltrates the teardrop
I spent months
Making water tight
Small price
To drive through
This sparse, vibrant paradox
Heart of the prairie
A tabletop landscape dotted
With silos, barns and homesteads
Spread widely across the checkerboard
Of wheat, flax, canola and corn
To some, perhaps, a vast empty space
But from this tabletop to yours
Comes the bread
We spread the butter on
Closed for Business
Bidness as usu’l
For outports and canneries
Once the cod were gone
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