May the road to fulfillment be long and steep
and smeared with fog, moss-lined, leaf-strewn,
rockslide-prone, oft-closed for repair, haunted,
the darker the better, no sun- or moon-light,
bulbs of streetlights, if any, smashed, filaments
exposed to the cold like nerves, scarred by
lightning, by overturned freight trucks, by
mudslides left uncleared, the only life or light
that of your high beams, flickering, weak
like a voice shouting praise at a waterfall,
how beautiful, how beautiful the roar, needless
of your praise, soaking your backpack's 420D ripstop
Nylon, water leaking onto your just-unboxed GPS,
its delicate internals no less miraculous than
the scales of a trout, or shiny:
nothing should find its way without getting lost,
delivered to your door within hours of wanting it.
Fulfillment
