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Dead Ends
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I’ve been taking backroads. Some say “Dead End.”
I follow them anyway. Some go for quite a way,
past drying soy beans, corn fields, and pasture,
dwindling finally into a farmer’s back yard,
or a grassy riverbank overhung by low trees
where ducks fly off, scattering water.
Then I think,
every road’s a dead end,
every highway ends somewhere—
U.S. 1 at Key West, I-35 at Laredo
or at Duluth, depending on
where you start. I-5 ends
at Tiajuana or Bellingham, I-90
at the Atlantic Ocean or Puget Sound.
Every highway should have a sign,
big as can be, at each end, and every
few miles in between, so you’re
not lulled into a cockamamie optimism.
Dead end.
It’s where we’re going,
every damn one of us,
wind combing our hair, radio wailing,
tires humming, bugs splattering,
no matter how many rest stops
we stretch our legs at
to prolong the trip, no matter
if the journey lasts days or years,
we turn up
finally
where the sign says,
Here you are at last,
old fellow, where the gravel peters out,
the open space begins,
and night falls fast.
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Writer
Bio
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William Borden's poem, "Eurydice’s Song," with monotypes by Douglas Kinsey, was published in 1999 by Bayeux Arts, Calgary, and St. Andrew’s Press, Laurinberg, NC. A collection of Borden's poems, Slow Step and Dance, was published in 1991. His poems have appeared in several anthologies, including Winged Spirits (Bayeux Arts), The Runner's Literary Companion (Breakaway Books), Mixed Voices: Contemporary Poems about Music (Milkweed Editions), The Tie That Binds: Mothers and Sons/Fathers and Daughters (Papier-Mache Press), The International Haiku Contest Work Collection (The Modern Haiku Association), Minnesota Poetry Calendar (Black Hat Press), Fresh Water: Poems from the Rivers, Lakes, and Steams (Pudding House Publications), and GRRRRR (Arctos Press). His poems have also been published in numerous magazines, including Rattle, American Jones Building & Maintenance, Heron Dance, Poetry Tonight, The Midwest Quarterly, Quantum Tao, Cincinnati Poetry Review, The South Dakota Review, and Milkweed Chronicle. Borden's novel, Superstoe, was recently republished by Orloff Press. Superstoe was first published in England in 1967 by Victor Gollancz and in the U.S. in 1968 by Harper & Row.
wborden@paulbunyan.net
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Other
Pedestal Published Works
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