The Rotted Road

There is a rotten road I do not know which one

A year ago today it took a son

Him I did not know but his word I heard oft

Its echoes deceive me and lead me astray

He spake, yes not with an O but with an A, that is to say he did not round a great wheel

Rumbling out of our world’s cancerous zeal

Instead he liked to sit and laugh and do those things which are most likely real

He spake of humble gratitude and competitive action

Now, I sit, speaking of nothing, clutching empty hands

How out of ashy horror does one realize a way?

I don’t even speak the family’s language. 

My brother does, he enunciated love in all its words and more

He did all he could to numb that which is sore

Aspirin and amputations are very discord

And leerily, I vapidly look on, ward/ing/of/f emotions neeth my nose

A spectator to that, a spectator to those there to remember,

For that I do not

Memory implanted is not easily forgot and I don’t like to give it its room to consume

Room for that road and its empty rot

I have a poem, somewhere here, that speaks of the road in the forest

I could see then the road and its creek and its water rising

I could see then a lot more, see things I could construct and describe evermore

Now I know, now I see, nothing, that none of this could ever be

It could not happen to a person like me, I think, and yet

There I go, there I see

Little old me

They used to draw up

The two of us

He used to chuckle, deeper than you would think,

Then ratchet his voice up and teach us about God

We would ask and then go quiet and ponder 

What next thing we could say to keep us asunder

From such humbling pointing lecturing things

For each to there own, to each flower its bee

Oh flowers galore, flower now for rest of his life,

For gone he is not, though tremble he might

I see my warrior right in me

How long ago I left him to be

Alone

Blame we shall not go

Because guilt has not here a home

Memory is by what we all would like to be known

I think he might too

But still I wonder why ever he would leave this open life

From a valley rather a mountain, so much further to go, and without help but his own

Maybe not him, maybe some certain condition

But why oh why rob an act of the man’s volition

Is that which comparts us ever our own enemy?

What makes a man -

His feelings his act or his ultimate glee

His home, his life, or his final destiny

To me it is not any of this but that which remains to be gleaned

How could you know a man by anything

Except for what he left us to see

Better it is to learn from a story than write one

Far better to know a man than to forever recite one

Author's Note

Please read aloud. Suggestions are appreciated