So Many Roads by Ace Boggess
POETRY
Bored & nostalgic, introspective on a lonely evening,
I spent hours last night browsing
Live Music Archive, listening to songs
from among the fifteen-thousand Grateful Dead shows
kept for posterity like Christmas gifts in a trunk.
I saw the band in ’94, a year before Jerry Garcia’s death.
Like sexual fantasies realized, the experience was
neither delightful as imagined nor unpleasant as feared.
Just a concert, one of many I attended in my youth.
The crowd was the attraction: waves of color,
sly handshakes, flying discs sent high.
I sat in the far mezzanine at RFK, taking in the music,
Garcia & Weir so small from my vantage
I mostly watched them on a screen.
I found my show in the archive, a poor recording:
Bob going to hell in a bucket, Jerry standing on the moon
or musing in nostalgia about so many roads
that lead to home. I was too inexperienced to appreciate
the performance. I needed a second chance.
My roads went other ways, the future a ravenous
devourer lurking, while the past slouches
against a signpost in the previous town,
eyes glazed, expression always somewhat sad.
Ace Boggess is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include poetry collections, My Pandemic / Gratitude List from Mōtus Audāx Press and Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press, and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press.
