.<\/p>\n
The road,
\nIs the mind,
\nAnd the mind,
\nIs the road,
\nWe mind the road,
\nThe road does not mind us,
\nBut I don’t mind,
\nThe road is just an idea,
\nAnd so am I.<\/p>\n
I shake out a Marlboro,
\nStick it between my lips,
\nLight it with a lighter,
\nAnd drag on it,
\nI smoke it.
\nI am a smoker,
\nAnd I do it well.<\/p>\n
Smoke is just an idea.
\nI don’t mind it.
\nOdd that people,
\nShould worry about death,
\nSince they will die anyway,
\nAnd death is just an idea,
\nJust like the road is an idea,
\nSo why should we mind?<\/p>\n
There are many roads,
\nEach is different,
\nYet, we drive them all,
\nAbout the same,
\nExcept the really hard ones,
\nWe drive those differently,
\nAnd sometimes we mind.<\/p>\n
I have driven many roads,
\nI cannot remember them all,
\nAnd none of them remember me,
\nI was just a wheeled machine,
\nNothing else to the tar,
\nThe macadam,
\nThe gravel,
\nThe clay,
\nThe cement highway,
\nThe grassy road,
\nWith its ruts,
\nSometimes wet,
\nSometimes dry,
\nSometimes rocky,
\nAnd sometimes so smooth,
\nIt felt like a dream,
\nTo drive that road,
\nThrough woods,
\nAlong the riverside,
\nThe cool brooklets,
\nThe lake,
\nDon’t you remember?
\nI do.<\/p>\n
I remember,
\nRiding in an old car,
\nBack in the 1950’s,
\nWith my father,
\nAt the wheel,
\nMy mother beside him,
\nMy brother next to me,
\nIn the hard back seat,
\nLooking out moving windows,
\nBuggy and old,
\nThe countryside so green and sere,
\nThe still land,
\nSo silent,
\nSo green and golden with harvest,
\nCows in the fields,
\nOld barns,
\nOlder houses made of simple wood,
\nUnpainted,
\nSeared by the the sun,
\nGray boards and Black roofs,
\nTired-looking tractors,
\nAnd old dogs,
\nAnd father would always say,
\n\u201cBountiful. Bountiful.\u201d
\nAnd in those simple words,’
\nMy heart felt glad.<\/p>\n
The road today,
\nIs not so good as that,
\nIt is faster now,
\nOn the big roads,
\nSo much looks all the same
\nRepeats itself over and over,
\nUntil my brain feels lame,
\nAnd empty,
\nAnd I do mind.<\/p>\n
I mind enough,
\nTo write these words,
\nI mind enough,
\nTo remember,
\nAnd to care,
\nTo even share,
\nA bit of yesteryear,
\nWhen things moved slower,
\nAll things on a human scale,
\nExcept New York City,
\nChicago,
\nOther big cities,
\nBut that was alright,
\nI didn’t mind.<\/p>\n
Today,
\nMillions of people,
\nMake their living by the road,
\nBecause that’s where all the people are,
\nThey are all on the road,
\nEveryone gets on the road sometime,
\nSome never get off,
\nSome are born on the road,
\nSome live on the road,
\nSome die on the road,
\nBut we don’t mind,
\nWe want the road.
\nThe road is us.
\nWe are the road people,
\nAnd by the several billions,
\nIn our countless millions of cars and trucks,
\nWe should be scared.<\/p>\n
We go and go,
\nThen we return and return,
\nAnd then we go again,
\nWe keep going,
\nAnd returning,
\nAnd going,
\nUntil the return going,
\nIs the going return,
\nAnd we live that way,
\nDay after day,
\nWeek after week,
\nMonth after month,
\nYears upon years of it,
\nThe going and the returning,
\nAnd the going again,
\nAnd again the returning,
\nWe are the road people,
\nWe should be scared.<\/p>\n
What happens on the road?
\nNot much.
\nWe just want to get there,
\nAnd then get back.
\nWe call it normal now.
\nIt is normal,
\nTo be a road person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
. The road, Is the mind, And the mind, Is the road, We mind the road, The road does not mind us, But I don’t mind, The road is just an idea, And so am I. I shake out a Marlboro, Stick it between my lips, Light it with a lighter, And drag on it, … Continue reading “THE ROAD By Michael W. Eliseuson”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}