The Made Path

By Randy Blythe

Featured art: “Forest Road” by Aleksey, aleha_84

On-and-off blisspain,

a suckling turning to momma

to turn away again.

Teat becomes love, a motorcycle,

a bowling league, sex, a 401K, religion.

The corner store's best candy

is now Snickers, next week, Payday.

Maybe it’s only a detour

you think is it because you don't know any better,

like sightseeing on the way to the cemetery.

Or maybe that long dry line the red wasp

draws with its downturned stinger

across an afternoon in July.

Going where? 

Part of you wants to follow.

Part fears the possible pain.

Consider the cow,

wise beyond her calling,

who knows the woods and pasture

by ground her muzzle rarely leaves

and wears a way in the years she’s given,

overhill side of the weather--wiregrass,

stumphole, bulrush notwithstanding--

ambling along the low ridge

that opens onto clover.

Randy Blythe lives on the family farm in Etowah County, Alabama. His first full-length collection, The Human Part, was published in 2014 by FutureCycle Press, and his second, The Wish Furnace, is scheduled for publication by the same press in April of 2023. His poems have appeared in a number of publications, among them Tar River Poetry, Chicago Quarterly Review, Aji, Pleiades, and Northwest Review.

aleha_84 creates cozy pixel art scenes. You can find his work on Twitter @84Aleha, on Instagram @aleha_84, or at linktr.ee/aleha_84.