A road leading to the imagination...

This will be my last posting from my location in West Palm Beach, Florida. After 82 little writings, I am heading to the Big Apple to try my turn in that big town. I look forward to the challenges that await me. This little writing below talks about a road filled with challenges, detours, bends and turns;

An Old, Long-Winding Road

There’s an old, long-winding road
behind my house, seldom used anymore
except for the occasional walk
or the contadino who herds his sheep
or the hunters off to hunt.
The road, like the young poet’s unpaved imagination
is congested, is cluttered
with overgrowth from under-use.
Nature, herself, has become the re-creator;
slowly, with unfathomable patience, she has distorted
the road, she has determined the scene– the manner in which the snow impedes,
the way in which the moss proceeds
to grow on the stone embankments.

As I walk, ducking and bending through the brush,
a slap of branch at cheek,
a trip of weeds at foot,
attempting to keep balance and thought intact– pense me–
Has the original purpose of the road altered?
Were the first builders solely interested
to quicken distances between podere to podere? Or indeed,
did they too seek the detoured tranquility, the serenity,
of a meditative walk where their imagination
tangled with the Supreme Imaginator?
For sure, if shortening distance was their prime concern
the road should be straighter–
(for reason tells us the shortest distance between two point is...).

So each curve in this road,
each bend, each turn,
represents the imagination in the act of imagining.
And these first builders saw in this road
a form, simple and utilitarian as it be,
that required shaping and molding
so as to reflect its truer purpose;
that of the mind in its curious,
circuitous course to understand
itself and potential.