A poem.

I've never been someone who has really appreciated poetry. I remember liking some of the poetry we studied at school and enjoying some of the poems that my husband has shown me over the years we've been together but I've never felt the urge to pick up a poetry book and just lose myself in it, as I would with a novel.

But last weekend I was listening to Cerys Matthews' show on BBC 6 Music while I was getting ready to go out and she was talking to William Sieghart, who founded the Forward Poetry Prize. He said that people turn to poetry in times of need and often the challenge is finding the right poem for the right difficulty. This made perfect sense to me, that sometimes you discover things and they stay with you when you need them most. 

He then read out a poem which gripped me so completely that I forgot what I was doing for those few moments and just listened. 

It felt like the perfect poem to read at the beginning of a new year, with all its new adventures to come, because how dull would life be if you planned every moment and knew what was to come around every corner? I'm sharing it here because I thought you might like to read it too - who knows, perhaps this is the right poem for your difficulty too?

What If This Road by Sheenah Pugh

What if this road, that has held no 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?