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
I especially miss the logging roads in the Sooke Hills, barricaded by Timberwest, the WaterBoard and the TLC. Those were my roads. Inroads.
So those terror roads were waterboarded.