The Occasional Traveler

This is a poem of male roads. It starts with an ordinary road made up of daily traffic plus the occasional traveler impulsively joining the regulars. Unlike them he has no sense of the time this journey will grab from his life, he cannot calculate whether or not it is worth the risk. The seasoned traveler can always turn around, go back home, and salvage part of the day. But this impulsive one is lost between the too familiar house he has abandoned and a goal he cannot name or envision. In the end he will need to see his journey as a success. All around him the regulars are smiling, counting their profits, congratulating each other, laying plans and new schemes. Only the occasional traveler, this man bereft of companionship, is alone. His mind is a round-about, with no exits, only entrances. At day's end, no woman sweetens his life.