Vistas & Byways Review - Fall 2020
  • Contents
    • In This Issue
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Poetry
    • Bay Area Neighborhoods
    • Inside OLLI
  • About Us
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • Archive
    • Spring 2020
    • FALL 2019
    • SPRING 2019
    • Fall 2018
    • SPRING 2018
    • FALL 2017
    • FALL 2016
    • SPRING 2016
    • FALL 2015

​POETRY 
  

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The End of all Roads
​by Alan Brewer

​Follow me on these empty roads
reaching into darkness, spreading
like spiderwebs of asphalt
growing faint with neglect.
 
Headlights bore a hole
through the night,
silence breathes
beside me on the road,
every mile another breath
throbbing through darkness. 
 
Full moon spotlights
trees lining the road,
scrub pine, aspen, willows
and chunks of granite
speckled with last traces
of snow in the cold spring air. 
 
Feel the vibrations of the car
over blacktop, gravel
and finally dirt
as the road winds out
into the entropy
at the end of all roads. 
 
Come to a stop in dead leaves,
stripped branches, fallen trees
to a place familiar from a dream,
nowhere further to go,
at last
no memory of where I came from.
 
Dead silence fills the night air,
breathing the darkness, living
in some unseen light
like dark matter that fills the universe.
We cannot see it. 
 
I touch the soft heart of darkness
in the midst of a moonlit wood,
all movement stopped.
There is nowhere else to go.  
I have finally come home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Brewer has lived in San Francisco for 45 years and been an OLLI at SF State member for over a decade. He has a BA from Northwestern University and an MA in Clinical Psychology from John F. Kennedy University. He has had many different jobs, from house painter to alcohol/drug rehab counselor to legal secretary. He has been writing poetry for over 40 years, has written feature articles for The Richmond Review and The Sunset Beacon. For the last 15 years, he has written mostly memoir. He has trekked in Nepal (Annapurna, later Everest), sailed as passenger/crew member on an 18th Century square-rigger in French Polynesia, and has traveled to all continents except Australia and Antarctica. 
Other works in this issue:
Poetry
​The Man of the Always Never   
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IN THIS ISSUE

BAY AREA NEIGHBORHOODS

FICTION

INSIDE OLLI

NONFICTION

POETRY

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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.​
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to theVistas & Byways  volunteer staff.

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  • Contents
    • In This Issue
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Poetry
    • Bay Area Neighborhoods
    • Inside OLLI
  • About Us
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • Archive
    • Spring 2020
    • FALL 2019
    • SPRING 2019
    • Fall 2018
    • SPRING 2018
    • FALL 2017
    • FALL 2016
    • SPRING 2016
    • FALL 2015