What if this Road by Sheenagh Pugh

Sheenagh Pugh’s ‘What If This Road’ is one of the poems I prescribe most in my Poetry Pharmacy – and for good reason.

A very potent fear of the unknown runs in our species which I imagine has been with us since the time when to venture into a new valley was to risk being devoured by wolves.

Nowadays, we seek to allay this primal fear with social media, relentlessly hectic schedules and prediction after prediction about what the future will hold.

Strangely, in an environment in which we have ready access to more information than ever before, we are more paralyzed by our ignorance than we have ever been. Perhaps because we have grown used to the expectation of technologically-enhanced certainty and knowledge in our day‑to‑day lives, we are less able to accept uncertainty when confronted with it.

What If This Road

What if this road, that has no held surprises
these many years, decided not to go
home after all; what if it could turn
left or right with no more ado
than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin
were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,
that is shaken and rolled out, and takes
a new shape from the contours beneath?
And if it chose to lay itself down
in a new way; around a blind corner,
across hills you must climb without knowing
what’s on the other side; who would not hanker
to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know
a story’s end, or where a road will go?

Write Your Medicine Prompt:

To start, choose an image that catches your attention, evokes a rumbling of emotion. You may know why, maybe not. Sometimes it is writing itself that will help you see why that image resonates.

It can be an image in your imagination, a pic from your cell phone, or a random picture from a magazine.

The idea is to explore, in poetry, how this image makes you feel. Often the image that comes to mind or captures your attention is speaking to you, represents a part of you that wants to be expressed. In this context, writing is the deepest form of listening. 

Here is my image:

Here is my poem:

Like the wave
A memory of a dream
Swimming the depths
Surrounded with whales
I am afraid
I feel free

What is your image and poem?