| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
THE ROAD
Melissa A. Resch
(About Poetry Forum)
(#4 from the series
Seven Wonders of One Woman’s Existence)
A pilgrim loves the road.
Or rail.
She thinks the train more romantic.
The swing and click spills stories
From a lonely widow about the old days in a kibbutz.
The clack sways theories
From an atheist who glories in logic.
Within hours the universe is settled.
Nowhere to be but here,
Till she’s there.
Then it’s one foot before the other to
Learn the secrets
Of gondolas that skim canals,
Castles that stand firm on windy moors,
Birthplaces of voices like Dickens and Mozart.
Turbulence rises, though,
It bubbles up a deeper secret;
That mankind is often unkind.
Within wire fences of a puzzling locale
Such as Dachau,
Electrified by her own terror,
She laid to rest her pure trust in goodness.
On the trail again,
When confusion of conundrums
Steal sleep and borrow time,
Some bit of beauty pierces clarity into reality.
Maps are unfolded,
Destinations chosen,
A new journey is begun with wide eyes and curious strains
To seek secrets that please a pilgrim.
Judge Mark Yakich’s comment: “A short lyric moving from simple images and sounds to a last zipwingding line -- ‘Within hours the universe is settled’ -- which reminds me of James Wright’s last line in his famous Lying in a Hammock poem: ‘I have wasted my life.’ The poem has an epithet which states that this is poem #4 in a series -- makes one want to find the rest of the series.”
Guide note: Melissa has posted the whole series, Seven Wonders of One Woman’s Existence, on our Poetry Forum.
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
Honorable Mention, March 2003
