It is an existential crisis.
The Road Not Traveled
( A monologue)
What merit is achieved, after four long years of college,
With so many directionally challenged people
Driving out the college gate, with no clue where they’re going?
There’s a reason I call this soliloquy "The Road Not Traveled, "
For how often have people asked me,
"Can I take this road to the highway?"
And take or leave my repartee, they always travel on,
While the road does not, it stays right here,
Turn of the Century, last century, (I know what year it is…)
the pastoral past, the nineteen-o’oughts, The ol’ Poet, School Headmaster, no less,
rode out this way from that very campus gate,
Clattering buckboard and harnessed horse,
yet unable to decide,
Which path the road not taken, and
which the road less traveled,
So deciding not to further tramp the beaten path,
instead he pulls up here, babbling
"Can you tell me how to get to the Broad Way?"
I said;
"Practice practice practice…"
But of course his horse knew the way,
(shake of his mane at the thought)
Would the tenured old coot deign to ask him…
See here, I’m the joke,
the curmudgeonly ol’ New England farmer,
Sittin’ on the porch,
hay twig in teeth,
And many a time on a warm day, up they’d stop up an’ ask me
"Does this road go to Boston?"
My response,
"Naw, it jus’ stays raght they-ya,"
Or, perhaps, I parse the ‘phrase laconic,’
"Cahn’t git they-ya frum hee-ya"
I thought of calling this piece ‘The Road UnMapped,’
‘cause of how many never thought a’ where’d they’d go after graduatin’,
Think on it,
Once, this Post-Grad drove up, convertible top set back,
and pointing to his map, shouts
"Can I take this to the interstate?"
I tell ‘em the truth, "It’s your map son, I don’t mind,"
Sometimes it’s a chore, watchin’ people come out the college,
confused, aimless, lost,
Look there now, see, the lettered undergrad, his drivin’ Happy Pappy,
his Honey Chummy Mummy, sittin’ shotgun seat,
Got more money than sense,
know everything
But where they’re going, ‘n how to get there,
Still pulling up here to this day to check directions,
just they don’t ask me no more,
Since fifty years ago, I just see them, the driver,
swearing at an eagle’s nest of a crumpled accordion map
I thought that was the end, then,
Drivers started straddling the double yellow line,
poking their nose pickin’ finger at a little black Garmin on the dash!
Which later they replaced with i-Phonies,
An’ now they got them ‘On Screen’ directions,
but still pokin’ their nose pickin’ fingers, not lookin’ at the road, where they goin?
I heard tell this next generation will get there so quickly,
they’ll be there before even they know where to go,
The Black box’ll choose where to drive ‘em
self driving car get ‘em there,
Maybe it’ll pick their majors too,
while they, just watchin’ a Harry Potter film, or
The Pandora’s box plugged straight in the brain,
will still ride out the college,
lost as ever,
Yet, I’ll admit, one thing has changed,
The Garmins, they were $100,
The iPhones, $500,
the SUV with the On Screen, at least $35,000,
For that money,
Hell! Jump in my truck,
I’ll Uber you for half!
