No Other Road

*Written for day 27 of the PAD challenge. Prompt: a "hopeful" poem.

because there is no other road
we lace our boots up and look,

resolutely, at the ink drying on the
page, these floods that would

detail, in an exhaustive manner,
all that has gone before, the

case notes, blue on white, neatly
filed, the various and sundry

applications, forms, petitions and
letters to the editor--a fine

thing indeed, to see your name
in print--

all the while that small wild
bird, quivering, flying in your breast,

the ever-living heartbeat that
forgets to die, somehow, and

lives on, the spark amidst
the dust crackling into a bonfire