16 July 2014

A Long Road


The road is long,
and not the way
we planned. Is it wrong
to want? We played

the ones who trust,
in what, or whom,
the world, the busts
of saints? What's true

my love? Predict.
You know of roads,
of faith, of strict
response that holds

a hope aloft
when up is how
the road and croft
seems bent. We bow,

exist to serve,
belong with traits
of skill and verve,
but still, we wait.


For Susie's Bits of Inspiration- The Yellow Brick Road over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads.
I took the photo in Trinidad.


24 comments:

  1. What I most like about this poem is the way each stanza is connected to the last with a run-on line. This really gives a sense of the journey.

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  2. there is a nice cadence to your words as well..like a walk...or a journey...
    that it is not the way we planned...somehow seems comforting
    come the end...

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    1. I see courage as choosing well our attitude to the 'not as we planned' happenings.

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  3. The rhyme here is really well-crafted, Mary, and adds a great deal of force to the mood of longing and questioning.

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    1. Thanks, Hedge. I was reading about iambic dimeter and wanted to write in this form. It helped me be more precise about what I wrote.

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  4. There are so many questions along the yellow brick road..some answered, many not. You have spoken of the journey beautifully. Thank you for taking part in the challenge.

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    1. I liked this challenge, Susie, even if the journey is difficult at this point of waiting.

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  5. Replies
    1. I can see it's on my mind and heart as I look at my last posts.

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  6. Nice reading, going down that road. Most roads are not exactly like what we had planned. Your pretty picture reminds me of a lane going in to an East Texas farm.
    ..

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    1. The photo is from a wonderful day spent with my daughter in Trinidad.

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  7. Such a beautiful poems... Its like a song... Loved it!

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  8. Great weave here between the road we travel and the much straighter one we believe or yearn for. Sometimes, in a poem like this, the two are allowed to coincide, offering just a glimpse that perhaps they are alternating faces of the same path.

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    1. I appreciate your saying that, it helps me see it in a different/helpful way.

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  9. all this waiting....

    what if all we get, is now???

    what if now, is our only fully awake time?

    what good, will be all the preparing for, and denying ourselves, and waiting, waiting, waiting?

    of what use?

    the self sacrifice, in the name of "rules"?

    the putting off and putting off, till some "reward" in the "after"?

    why not live a life, directed by simple logic, in the now?

    mmmmm........

    i like that!

    i like that!!!!

    tessa~

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    1. I hear you- I only have now and this moment is to be cherished. It's my challenge just now and I'm commited to doing that even as I attempt to sell our home here in Italy to be able to move back to the US to be closer to my family. It has taken longer than I hoped.

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  10. So true that the road often turns out not to be the way we planned...but it can be a wonderful journey nonetheless!

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    1. It is a wonderful journey and I love my life. And I long for home.

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  11. bowing and accepting even if the road is not what we had in mind exactly...think that is one of the keys to a happy life as well....we change what is in our power to change and embrace what we can not

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  12. This is really wonderful Mary.

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