Robert S King's "No Road Ends Forever"
Robert S. King lives in Athens, GA. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published eight poetry collections, most recently Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014) and Messages from Multiverses (Duck Lake Books, 2020). His personal website is www.robertsking.info.
Many roads go through Déjà Vu.
Some speed through Euphoria,
whose streets below the surface,
like all, are mud or dust
and remind of Purgatory.
Our blisters prove no road is kind,
just kind of lost or twisted into ruts,
yet bound on the never-ending way
to Wanderlust, a large city of the mind
where footprints and tracks
go beyond dead ends.
One end leads to another,
and no road we could take
is clear and smooth, save one
passing quickly through Epiphany.
Many have potholes deep as graves.
Let signs along the way be suggestions,
not laws. Careful not to obey
stop signs in Detour and Deadwood.
If the eye can see ahead,
wheel and foot follow,
dragging their heavy memories behind,
watching for those holes
where the dead weight of their lives
might rest in peace.
And at some crossroad near Forever,
puzzled by a map of tangled roads,
there is no rest for those from Weary
who confuse the road to Paradise
with the highway to Hell.
© 2022 Robert S. King
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