​Where Roads Meet

 

How many dangled there, reluctantly,
veins swilling with adrenalin,
their terror washed away for lack of air,
rain beading on their sweaty skin?
No doubt technology these days
could find the post-holes, somewhere on
the verge among the long grass,
nettles, rosebay willow-herb.

When you've lived over half a century,
fifty years seems not so long. Those days are
no more than a few lifetimes past,
lives cut short at that. If someone built
a scaffold, found a rope, there'd still be those
who'd let them string up kids for stealing bread.