“Divided Highway” gives us a way out of our Western adventures of the last two days here at Behind the Lines. I remember a cold January day putting together the collection with hundreds of poems strewn across the floor to create a logical sequence and Divided Highway told a story and provided a fork in the road as the 30th poem of BE.aGaIN.
The piece started as some word play on linear time with the concepts of “past”,”present” and “future” all making an appearance in the first two lines.
Time lines gave way to the white lines of a lonely road as our companionless, passenger-less protagonist makes his way towards a realisation- “What’s done is done”-I stole this line from the fabulous song-“The town I loved so well” by Phil Coulter and made famous by the Dubliners and Luke Kelly’s vernacular vibrato.
Human behaviour is strange when you think about it too much. It is only “White lines sprayed on asphalt” as a known signifier which keep us on the correct side of the road!
The unseen character of this poem is on his own and someone who doesn’t want to “dare to look back”.
Whatever happened that caused this solitude and this situation and it’s ensuing blinkered onward journey came out of the blue -“Exits aren’t always signposted” and that the “baggage” that he has been left with is something he is going to have to carry with him wherever he is going now.
There is a sense that whoever left him did so suddenly and that “to know”- this new found unwanted knowledge- has left him with just one road and one direction but not anyone to share it with.
Algo.
Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines 