Life’s Road

This poem uses the imagery of a road to explore life’s dynamics.

 

 

Fierce sun’s heat on hard black top;

Metal melting and egg frying hot.

Sizzling, steaming, eyesight dazzling;

Cause of men and machine frazzling.

 

Biting wind chill with horizontal rain;

Hailstones lashing, face stinging pain.

Water seeping into any gap it can find;

Constantly testing what man’s designed.

 

Daily round of expansion, contraction,

As the sun tracks in relentless fashion.

Now heat, now chill, forming potholes;

Better stay awake at those controls!

 

Road works entail stress and delay;

Diversions guarantee driver dismay.

Contraflows, temporary traffic lights;

A deal of pain to put things to rights.

 

Life’s journey can be likened to a road:

Length, route, A to B, and highway code.

Clearly mapped or confusing selection;

GPS or anyone’s guess for direction.

 

What’s our mettle? What DNA in our cells?

Between road and life, are there paralells?

Just what surface do we present to others?

Do we add value to a network of brothers?

 

As we travel through each day’s episode,

Can this be likened to a stretch of road?

Do our vicissitudes create a chicane?

But calmer times run straight and plain?

 

Does the traffic flow, or swell and congest?

Are we jammed in by things we detest?

Do we perhaps see a dual carriageway,

Where God keeps apace come what may?

 

Are there bumps put there by our foes?

Not for calming, but to add to our woes?

Do we speed through it all regardless?

Hit and running in our mobile fortress?

 

A car can be half a ton of lethal weapon:

Are our personalities built to threaten?

Do we steamroller friend as well as foe,

Amassing loads of penalty points as we go?

 

Will the great Town Planner adopt our road?

Will our destination be paradise bestowed?

Or is it that we cul de sac into a dead end,

Our choices driving others… round the bend?