The Lightning Paths

 

The Lightning Paths

 

Before lightning strikes

feeders unseen to the ordinary I

travel all possible paths through the air

to find the one way to bolt to earth.

Before the secret green cells in the leaf

drink from its suncatchers, light walks

every path through the protein scaffold.

 

Scientists say that any road taken

collapses all possible paths.

In the leaf, in the air, in a human span

no road, perhaps, is entirely untaken.

If our lives are gardens of forking paths

what happens when we take one branch

with the definite body? Do possible selves

travel on along all the possible paths?

Can we meet each other?

Can the branching paths rejoin?

 

In default mode I departed a mental map

and followed a road I thought I had left

towards an old place. When I saw my error

I thought at least I was on familiar ground

on my ghost trail. I bulled across many lanes

to make an utterly wrong turn and did not see

I was speeding the wrong way on the Royal Road

until I met a familiar, a bull on a steakhouse sign.

 

It's not so easy to get back on a road you left.

To get my head around this

I'll go on a quantum walk tonight

like light in the leaf, like lightning's feeders,

we try all paths in our dreams.

When we are witness to ourselves

we can change the default mode

and weave the many roads into the right one.

- Robert Moss