I accepted the challenge of writing a poem a day this April. This is #1.


Highway

Starting is easy
the easiest part.
It just gets hard
when you hand over your heart.
That awful word
commitment
crops up
in the most likely places.

There used to be possibilities
endless.
I used to have choices,
but if I take this path
forsaking all the other ones
so much more attractive
than this blacktop road.

There's a sign in the distance
5000 miles to Golden Anniversary
Doctoral Degree, Bestseller List.
I sit down in the middle of the road
and weep.

But I can't sit long
I might get run over
by those speeding by at 95mph.
Don't they have laws against that?

I'm already out of gas.

I look longingly at the other roads
ribbons in the distance.
Should have taken the easier path,
but I chose this one.

No turning back now.



April 1, 2008

© 2008 Anne Westlund




Poetry by Anne Westlund
Read 1149 times
Written on 2008-04-02 at 08:11

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Rob Graber
I like this poem very much, especially the ending that so recalls Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." Two queries: Am I wrong to want line 8 to say either "least likely" or "most unlikely"? Second, shouldn't the second stanza's second "sentence" be a true sentence grammatically? Rewriting line 12 as "but not once I took this path," might be a good fix. I love the third and fourth stanzas!
2008-04-02