Advent, Day 22: You May Slouch

(Day 22 of this year’s Advent series. Yesterday’s piece was about honesty; today we consider crossroads.)

You May Slouch

You may slouch
Towards Bethlehem –
Or take up your mat and walk;
Run, praising, or run
The other way
Following Jonah. 

Whichever, however way –
You will arrive:
It is a small town,
But a crossroads
No path is spared.

– With special appreciation of 
William Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming –

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Crossroads are (notoriously) places where something happens: something is offered, something is received, something or someone is refused or gained. They are sites of interchange, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. 

Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919, as a reflection of the dawning post-WWI era. The images it portrays are generally understood to be terrifying, although this has never stopped me from loving the poem to pieces and sneaking quotes into cards for every possible occasion (graduation to Christmas to “get well”). It’s motivational. Or “awe-inspiring.” Something like that, anyway. My point is – Yeats was writing after World War I, he knew damn well what kind of rough beast might be on Europe’s horizon. And he still framed it as a question: “…what rough beast…” – ?

Which means it could be something amazing. Unlikely, yes. But it could be. And a sizable portion of hope is looking towards that unknown rough beast – 

And holding out a dog treat. Just in case. 

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