One Pole At A Time
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
He ran the distance
between where he was
and the next marker in the ground—
one telephone pole,
then the next,
then the next again.
Hope, he understood,
is not a grand gesture.
It is a sequence of decisions
made while the body is tired
and the road does not shorten
out of kindness.
Every day,
the same question:
Can I reach that point?
Not the horizon.
Not the finish.
Just that place
where effort meets resolve
and says,
Here will do for now.
Pain did not ask permission.
The weather did not cooperate.
The scale of it all
did not shrink to match
what was possible.
So he adapted.
He broke the impossible
into increments small enough
to survive.
This is how anything hard
is actually done.
Not by conquering the future,
but by negotiating with the present.
By agreeing to one more step.
One more breath.
One more refusal to quit
before you know what comes next.
There is something holy
about that kind of movement—
the insistence on forward
without illusion.
No speeches to carry you.
No guarantees waiting ahead.
Just the quiet discipline
of showing up again
in a body that is already asking
for mercy.
And this is the lesson
he left behind,
still standing:
You don’t have to outrun the distance.
You don’t have to be heroic today.
You only have to move
from where you are
to the next pole.
Whatever your road looks like—
grief,
healing,
work,
hope that feels heavier
than it should—
you are allowed to make it smaller.
You are allowed to say:
I can do this much.
And tomorrow,
you will decide again.
One pole.
Then another.
Not because the journey is easy,
but because forward
is made possible
in pieces.
And sometimes,
that is how a country is crossed.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
