The Road

“The Road”

What has become of the blue of the sky?
I see no light as the stars slowly die.
All is dark here since the rain went away.
The clouds have fallen and faded to grey.

Though I know the birds have come home to sing,
I still wonder what became of everything.
You said it would be this way if I wanted to go—
But it wasn’t something you could expect me to know.
Though there are many roads that I have crossed,
I never knew anything, save what I had lost.
Now what I’d give to lose what is following me:
The very thing you tried to help my spirit see.

Your warnings fell on ears deafened by pride.
Now there is no one left by my side.
Since I was a child, I have longed for this fate—
Now it has come, and it is too late
To turn from the road paved by your bones
The wind, like a dying man in agony groans.
Or is that my voice piercing the night?
Now something that is not there shines in my sight—
The same thing I always was reaching for,
Always beyond the next waiting door
In a hall of doorways that lead nowhere—
That I stepped through before I knew what waited there.

You could not tell me, because nobody hears—
Through such music that corrupts such foolish ears
That was but the groan of a dying man’s dream,
Never to be that beauty it ever could seem,
Before it came true, the same as it happened to you.
The road was untraveled and called out to my spirit.
And none can save from such music those who dare to hear it.

What happened to the blue of the sky?
I watched the stars as they began to die.
I woke without sleeping on the other side.
I asked, “Who dwells here?” and the Dead replied.

© 2023 Marten Hoyle