The Occasional Traveller

POSTED IN contemporary poetry February 3, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Occasional Traveller

This is a poem of male roads. It starts
with an ordinary road made up of
daily traffic plus the occasional
traveller impulsively joining
the regulars. Unlike them he has no
sense of the time this journey will grab
from his life, he cannot calculate
whether or not it is worth the risk.
The seasoned traveller can always
turn around, go back home, and
salvage part of the day. But this
impulsive one is lost between
the too familiar house he has abandoned
and a goal he cannot name or envision.
In the end he will need to see his journey
as a success. All around him the regulars
are smiling, counting their profits,
congratulating each other, laying plans
and new schemes. Only the occasional
traveller, this man bereft of companionship,
is alone. His mind is a round-about,
with no exits, only entrances. At day’s
end, no woman sweetens his life.

 

 

 

Daniel Brick