A Poem

It's 1:15 Tuesday morning, and I'm working on a poetry anthology for Creative Writing. I wrote this a few weeks ago, and I didn't mean for it to be this deep and stuff, but I just now realized that it is really symbolic...and stuff. Pretty much everything I'd say in it is at the bottom in the commentary. Let me know if you have any input before...about 7:45, otherwise, just enjoy and let me know what you think.

The Road Keeps Wandering on Through the Corn

Dan Kristan

The road keeps wandering on through the corn.

As cars and trucks and birds go by

The road becomes  more worn.

Rarely on this road is there a horn

Folks hit the gas and just enjoy the ride.

The road keeps wandering on through the corn.

When it snows, the travelers mourn.

Half the cars are off the side.

The road becomes more worn.

Every few miles, flowers do adorn

the places where unlucky people died.

The road keeps wandering on through the corn.

Miles away, a baby is born.

The road can almost hear it cry.

The road becomes more worn.

The edge is laced with vines with lots of thorns.

But most do not stop to ask why.

The road keeps wandering on through the corn.

The road becomes more worn.

This villanelle describes not the actual act of traveling, but the medium on which travel takes places, at least literally. It can also be a metaphor for life, but I'll return to that in a minute. I got the inspiration for this poem driving home from Chicago on I-80. I realized that people don't really think about what went into building the road, or what it's like when they, individually, aren't on it. They just sit there, adjusting their thumbs a little when the road curves. The tone is melancholy; kind of sorrowful. My favorite part about this poem is the symbolism. Imagine the road as a person's life. They just keep going, and things happen, and they get older and tired. The snow represents an old man's white hair. He's getting old, and so of his friends--half of them are "on the side," in the hospital. Every once in a while, you do see a little grave next to the freeway, where a drunk driver slammed into someone and killed them. These flowers represent the old man's friends, many of whom pass away as he continues to age.  As the man starts to slip away, he reflects on his childhood, and can hear a crying baby.  As to the vines with thorns, they are the pleasures and consequences we experience in our lives. People do not ask why bad things happen to them. They just accept it, assume that it is their own fault, and move on.