“Roads”: Poems March 2025

The Road Becomes Me—Sreejata Roy

I imagined a road next to the sea,

Grey, smooth,  well kept

Breeze swept, swirling around a blue  hill,

Driving along this edge of the world

Wind in the hair, sun in the eyes

Alone but free.

But my road came to be the path

Of bruised, calloused feet

Over dirt and rocks, dust and soot,

Sometimes a fallen leaf

On broken footpaths

And chaotic streets;

And sometimes meandering

through uncertain woods

Under a sky of arching trees

Framing galaxies light years away..

As I take one step at a time,

Day to day to day

Feeling my way in the darkness,

And the wind whispers to the leaves

That the road becomes me.

The road that my mother saw and that led to her—Reenu Talwar

She would sit in the window seat

her eyes fixed on the turn in the road near the Church

where he would appear

at the same hour every evening and they would wave at each other.

She would put the kettle on

and tea would be ready by the time

he would walk in after a weary work day.

And both of them would sigh

and melt in mingled contentment, he at coming home and

she at the coming of home

for that’s what they were to one another.

And there was always that road between them

that they could look out over and feel assured at being there that they could cover quickly in long strides or even a run rain or shine, mist or snow

that stretch of road in the

then still quaint colonial town and later, in their stories and memories.

Even after he had lost his sight and she had passed away,

he kept walking down that road for there wasn’t much else to do

but to walk down that road towards her day in and day out

till she opened the door.

Walking Your Path—Abby Kesington

Until I wore your over-sized scrawny shoes

Scuttling to make my way through

Harrowing dark tunnels, dodging bullets and bombs,

I never knew where it pinched.

Until my roof was scalped

Like a bald vulture in rain, drenched,

Flapping its wet wings, perched on the carcasses of my home

Homelessness seemed a strange dream.

Until my plate filled to the brim with nothing to savor…

I never understood why stale sandwiches and browned radishes

Were indeed a cuisine you relished with vigor.

Till my garment was filled with moth,

Stained with blood and dirt

From crawling on all fours, over decomposing bodies

I couldn’t comprehend why you were always in rags.

Do forgive my oversight.

I failed to understand your sorrow

Blasé to your plight, with no thought of tomorrow

Drinking Chardonnay with friends all night

I thought myself Impervious to the vagaries of war

Till my soul was intoxicated with grief

Heartache from the blatant waste of life

No longer able to deny the massacres.

Please forgive me

For acting all uppity and tight

 When all you needed was a portion of my tithe my time and my voice.

Road Bonding—Mandakini Bhattacherya

Except for the drive, we do not talk —

The road gets us moving —

Moving not just on the road –

but moving inside ourselves —

Us – what we had been.

We talk then –

share a friendship –

discuss children, work, colleagues,

where to sell the newspapers –

what recipe for the Sunday chicken.

On the passenger side,

my feet move as you accelerate,

press brake, clutch.

On the driver’s seat, I drive

and marvel at your calmness

in my hands, for I drive Schumacher-like.

Still careful not to look at each other,

we look at the road.

Perhaps this is growing old,

perhaps this is growing young —

As we drive on the road, and rediscover

Each other.

Deercorpsing-–Daniel Gooding

Skirting the fringes of the countryside

as we journeyed between our home and school

we would see their occasional fat bodies

more often than their living counterparts:

a badger gently tumbled to one side;

hedgehogs lying like conkers on the road;

on motorways the awful angry ragout

of hair and limbs that once was called a fox.

Now I am living here, and this main road

is the thoroughfare of my daily business;

and everywhere I see corpses of deer

dashed upon the rocks of rolling hedgerow,

mummy’s skin all gaunt and slow-receding;

chunks have been taken out of them, bites of life

from a month’s worth of maggoty living.

They do not feign the badger’s drunken sleep,

nor execute the hedgehog’s forward roll;

I can no longer close innocent eyes

and shiver with the vehicle’s narrow pass.

Now I am at the wheel I must return

their blanket dead-eyed stare without a smile,

crawling along the road behind two laughing

middle-aged cyclists and a four-by-four.

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