The Road not Traveled

I am no somnambulist

In fact the opposite

But there are times

What one purports

Are difficult to support.

And I keep posing

Many questions

To no other than myself

And I have to say

I hate the thoughts

I often come up with.

Why this age?

Why in a nation that is ravaged,

Into a race others for no divine reasons despise,

And the family that raised

A meagre wages to earn

For a mules day work?

Nonetheless, however dismayed that I am

I know who I could have become

The right road had I taken.

But mischance that I am fated

From where I stood

The road branched out

Onto muti-pronged routes.

Some were long,

Others wide

The rest smooth and squiggly in form

But I chose the one close to home.

It offered turf ground

And in the past it had been trodden

By people related to this person

Thus it felt safe to walk on.

But the road was a mirage,

From this seemingly alert mind, deceptively camouflaged.

As I trudge along

Sooner than I had thought

The road came to an end

And made a gyratory turn

And brought me back

To where I began.

Copyright Haileselassie Girmay

5/2/99