Roads

Roads

 

Let’s celebrate roads

From point A to Point No Point

Paved and graveled and hacked out of the land

Backroads that undulate through forests

On cracked and broken pavement

Laid down once and then forgotten

Let’s exalt in the multi-laned highways and freeways

Crisscrossing the continent in loops and curls

Of massive sculptural forms of concrete and stone

Dividing farms and connecting so many other dots

Where speed counts and the steel flies and flies die

In front of our eyes

Let’s remember short cuts

Especially the ones that are

Since so many aren’t

But however meandering a short cut can be

You’ll get to where you’re going

Eventually

Back alleys have their place

So what if it’s not where we spend our

Landscaping budget

They work don’t they?

Let’s applaud roads that are interrupted by

Canyons

Rivers

            Lakes

And are bridged or ferried to the other side

To take up the trail again

Paved roads

Dirt roads

Logging roads that switchback up and into mountaintops

Twisting highways that hug the coastline

Onramps

Offramps

Let’s give a blue ribbon

To streets that are the closest to downtown with free parking

Let’s give a drum roll to roads that lie beneath elevated trains

Transit shadowed shelters of the clickety clack

Let’s rock out a power chord

To freshly paved roads with rolling hills with shoulders

Wide enough for longboarders to really open up

Let’s boo and hiss at all the toll booths

That choke and squeeze from place to place

Emptying our spare change before we get to the parking lot

Let’s celebrate roads

Roads that bring us back home

Or to the seven wonders of the world

To games and fame and funerals

From my door to yours

It’s all the same

The road

 

David Trudel   © 2012