POEM: FORK IN THE ROAD

Fork in the Road

And with that fork in the road

comes an altering

of expectations.

Your pulse thickens

as you walk,

and you feel a change

in the air--something.

It may simply be

that you have not been 

on this road 

in such a long time,

and have grown unfamiliar

with its ways.

Still, there's a lifting,

some shifting 

of the dark ahead.

And as the two paths part,

you see more clearly 

the road ahead.

And perhaps this time

you'll uncover

all that the season's 

tall grasses and tree limbs

have disguised as autumn’s

true divergence.

I LIKE WRITING ABOUT SINGLE MOMENTS, where thoughts crystallize, or you suddenly 'get it', or something clicks and you say, "Oh, yeah! Why didn't I see that before?" The poem, "Falling Snow" had such a moment for me, as did "Forgiving Light", and others. I guess one way of writing poetry is to stop and collect such moments when they happen, or where you have a 'face palm' moment of illumination (or switch your 40W bulb for a 60W.) I like moments that seem electric or at least have a greater 'charge' than most of the moments you have throughout the day.

I think you can also write poetry from more of a distance, so to speak, with a particular effect or purpose other than to highlight personal (hormonal?) moments of insight. for example, I write the "News" poems based on current events that I read about or watch on the news, and try to put an ironic or absurdist twist to things that I hope the reader finds enjoyable. You can write about the impersonal in a very personal way when you use the language of poetry.

The American poet, Robinson Jeffers, comes to mind and his powerful poem about modern America, "Shine Perishing Republic", and I'll include it here, because 1) it's a real poem written by a real poet, and 2) because it deals with politics and war (which can be, at once, impersonal and very personal), as well as broader concerns on the human condition, and—my point—it’s constructed on ideas as well as personal emotion, if that makes sense. His words, "And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens," are perhaps more relevant today than when they were written in 1925. 
We seem to accept so much of 'modernity' as right and proper and the way things are supposed to be. If Jeffers were alive, I think he'd be busy throwing rocks through all the glass houses that have sprouted up like toadstools across the land.

Shine, Perishing Republic
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and deca-
dence; and home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it

stub-bornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine,
perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the

thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God,

when he walked on earth.