Directions
Roger David Smith
when you were in your twenties you put a signpost on the lawn of your parents’ house
with all the places you had been and wanted to go again
brightly coloured arrows pointing in every direction
from ‘New York’ to ‘New Zealand’,
‘Costa Rica’, ‘Ochos Rios’, ‘Slovenia’, ‘Oregon’, ‘Prague’,
each one a path you had trodden and hoped to one day retread
‘Scotland’ was in there,
I was in Italy, but still, that was in there too
a possible route to take, from the seemingly infinite possibilities that stretched in every direction
years later, I saw the sign again
the pileated woodpeckers had taken their toll,
the words pecked back to fractions
‘England’ had turned into ‘gland’
(draw your own conclusions)
but ‘Scotland’ was still hanging in there, her letters clear
in what I took to be a personal triumph for our oft neglected nation
but today, walking your Mom’s dog across the dewy grass
all there was, was a woodpecked pole
that even the woodpeckers had abandoned
you would never know, unless you knew,
the hope and the dreams that went into that embattled log
now encircled by thornbushes, blocking out even the odd letters that remained intact
forsaken, hollow and warn, no directions left to give,
leaving us to find a new path
Roger David Smith was born and raised in the far north of Scotland, but currently lives in the south of France, where he works as a teacher. He has had short stories and poems featured in various literary magazines and websites including Cutting Teeth, Prosetrics, Poetry Scotland, Nerve, Nomad, Suburban Witchcraft, Urban75, La Rotonde Review, The Madrid Review and others. You can find him on Twitter/X @justrandomwords or on instagram @roger.david.smith