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
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
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