But Where Have All Your Thoughts Gone?

The best roads are the ones with no one
On them—no trucks, no cars, and no bikes,
No fools who pant up and down their hills,

No one but you and a crow or two,
Some beasts who pass through and are not hit—
Just a strip through the world left to sit

In the sun or the snow or the rain,
A broad, smooth brow with no thoughts in it,
A carved path that feels like a great gap

In not just the land, but the whole day.
A good road that has no one on it
Feels like it’s the one lost, left to wait

For the years to come and chew it down
Bit by bit as trees and shrubs close in,
Long grass breaks through, and the paint stripes fade.

It’s a set left bare on a bare stage,
A blank page left on a desk at death,
The place in the scroll where the scribe quit.