This is the crossroads
where the pole-mounted cart wheels
with their burden of broken criminals,
that interminable line like telephone poles
dwindling into the valley,
the one that stretches back
down the waterless mountain road
interrupted at intervals by crow cages
full of half picked bones,
is supposed to stop,
where the heel bruising stones
are supposed to turn to grass underfoot,
and the incline become horizontal.
But you know already
that Supposed-To-Be has little to do with Is,
and this is in fact only the place,
where the foothills end,
where the struggle to prepare
becomes the struggle to achieve,
and eventually, the struggle to survive.
And I do not have to tell you,
you who have struggled always
up the sheerest slope,
over rocks greased with your own blood,
that it is the struggle
and not the resting place,
however high up,
that makes us men,
©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS
William John Watkins 