You Can Only Go So Far
April 13 2010


You can only go so far
until it branches
peters out
runs into landscape.
A grand canyon
a mountain pass.

Off-ramps
pare away at traffic,
peeling-off commuters
in practical sedans,
short-hauls, and half-tons,
local taxi-cabs.
To a single lane of asphalt
scarred
by pot-holes and washboard,
flinching, as gravel shoulders
ping shrapnel back.
Bug splats, and last gas
next 50 miles.

In this silver birch
it ends in the growing point —
cells, dividing madly
manufacturing
captured sunlight
into shade.
And the tree of life, the same
just as Darwin imagined it.
Where we find ourselves perched
at the very end
of a single trembling branch,
a small green shoot
flattering itself
this is what trees are for.

Or on this forest path
where I take every branch, and fork,
getting more and more
narrow
erratic
overgrown.
In the past, someone must have come this way,
or at least headed back
I reassure myself.
Or was it animals?
Following the path of least resistance
the force of habit
browsing, prowling,
cryptic tracks, and hard scat
marking the way.

The further I go
the less well-travelled
the more alone.
Until the trees are so thickly packed
their limbs, so tightly thatched
it seems impassable.
I flatter myself,
the first human ever
to have come this far
night coming on,
the dark woods
getting darker.

So I turn for home, walking hard
the trail steadily opening-up before me,
like a leaf
unfurling from its bud.
I re-trace every branch and turn,
baffled, how unfamiliar
the exact same path can look
in reverse.

Yet, as always
it seems so much faster heading back.
Which I find a relief
a disappointment,
having gone not nearly so far
as I had hoped.