Had we each taken other forks
while treading the great sweep
of all those years then still waiting to be trod
our paths might have joined sooner,
but would we now be sick and needful,
perhaps close confidantes of poverty,
or would one, even both,
be among those already past
not here, alive, happy, content?
And if together we had had children
they would be other children
to those here now
and would love us, surely,
but any more, or any less?
As way leads to way a single other step
would have conjured a different future
forever unknown to us in ours
for yesterday’s once curve of futures
is as dark as the lives that toil
beneath the undisturbed rocks
alongside the walker’s road,
known only to whoever did travel
the roads we left untravelled.
Anthony Wade
Only child of an Irish migrant mother, relocated to Ireland following a medical disability, first published in 2018, since in Ireland, across Britain, in Spain, India, Canada and the USA. A Forward Prize nominee, lives by the sea not ten miles from where he spent childhood summers.