All the Difference
When no one wants to love or live with you,
you can always live in the woods in a box
of a house, and when your mind grows so light
in your head, as it will, that daylight looks
gray, you can always walk out in the rain
where gray sky is at least a higher ceiling,
and of course you’ll go to two forking paths
smothered in slick yellow maple and birch
leaves, and for a change you can always choose
the narrow stony one instead of the wide
easy old logging road, but right away
brambles will be grabbing at your rain gear,
leaves will brush across your face soaking
your collar, and you’ll have to watch your feet
for roots, instead of enjoying nature
like Thoreau did all by himself, while a drab
sparrow will keep chittering just ahead of you,
annoying you with its consistent stupidity,
and you’ll begin to realize mossy lumps
off in the trees you thought were firewood
some farmer of simpler times forgot to sled
home are really dumped washing machines,
gutted car parts, and middens of rusty cans,
and before too long you’ll come to a clutch
of ramshackle trailers just yards to the right
of the trail, ending all illusions of wilderness,
with two slavering pit bulls, savagely
straining at you on flimsy swing set chains,
and just beyond that clearing you’ll come
upon a muddy patch littered with brown
paper sacks and aerosol cans and condoms
of various garish hues will start popping up
on twigs like trail markers of your own spent
passions, so you’ll pause to reconnoiter
next to the words “fuck you” carved in tender
beech bark, to reconsider the journey’s parable,
when your heavy mind and heart come together
to perceive and understand you’ve gone too far
down this dirt track to turn back, a road less
ambled by philosophers than by men
who come to shoot guns at empty beer cans
and chirping songbirds, but what will make all
the difference, standing in that epiphany,
are wet and cold feet, until you’ll notice
that as you were bushwhacking evermore
blindly toward that end where all paths, hard
or easy, end, rain had ceased unnoticed,
and at any moment then the sky will crack
open and sunshine will pour down upon
you, as yellow and warm as it beams on houses
clamoring with mirth and love.
you can always live in the woods in a box
of a house, and when your mind grows so light
in your head, as it will, that daylight looks
gray, you can always walk out in the rain
where gray sky is at least a higher ceiling,
and of course you’ll go to two forking paths
smothered in slick yellow maple and birch
leaves, and for a change you can always choose
the narrow stony one instead of the wide
easy old logging road, but right away
brambles will be grabbing at your rain gear,
leaves will brush across your face soaking
your collar, and you’ll have to watch your feet
for roots, instead of enjoying nature
like Thoreau did all by himself, while a drab
sparrow will keep chittering just ahead of you,
annoying you with its consistent stupidity,
and you’ll begin to realize mossy lumps
off in the trees you thought were firewood
some farmer of simpler times forgot to sled
home are really dumped washing machines,
gutted car parts, and middens of rusty cans,
and before too long you’ll come to a clutch
of ramshackle trailers just yards to the right
of the trail, ending all illusions of wilderness,
with two slavering pit bulls, savagely
straining at you on flimsy swing set chains,
and just beyond that clearing you’ll come
upon a muddy patch littered with brown
paper sacks and aerosol cans and condoms
of various garish hues will start popping up
on twigs like trail markers of your own spent
passions, so you’ll pause to reconnoiter
next to the words “fuck you” carved in tender
beech bark, to reconsider the journey’s parable,
when your heavy mind and heart come together
to perceive and understand you’ve gone too far
down this dirt track to turn back, a road less
ambled by philosophers than by men
who come to shoot guns at empty beer cans
and chirping songbirds, but what will make all
the difference, standing in that epiphany,
are wet and cold feet, until you’ll notice
that as you were bushwhacking evermore
blindly toward that end where all paths, hard
or easy, end, rain had ceased unnoticed,
and at any moment then the sky will crack
open and sunshine will pour down upon
you, as yellow and warm as it beams on houses
clamoring with mirth and love.
