Narrow roads open to broader horizons

Much broader my loving because of this love,

much wider my world because I travelled this lane -
narrow and steep from the valley on rough,
loosely scattered scree, the tarmac quite worn off;
an interrupted trickle of gravel and mud
sliding slowly down from the hills to the plain.

Not just the horizons that change in travel

and here the hills clipped them, whipped them into piles
somewhere foreshortened, elsewhere invisible
and yet they broadened, on narrow paths and tunnels,
on stilts of bridges that looked like they’d fall
but stood still, when I glanced back, with skeleton smiles.



Narrow roads open to broader horizons
and clear the view of the mists and the rains;
and one slender bamboo grove, some fronds of fern
droop over the road, secret arches of caverns
and a stripped knuckle of stone imperiously summon
some shift of pulses in the extremes of veins.