WISHBONE

I've been fascinated with this passage—and the story it foreshadows—for a long time. The moment between Abraham and Lot where they willingly part company for the sake of a future peace is an understated turning point in Genesis, and it may even be the first moment in the Bible where we see an instance of literary foreshadowing: we see Lot consider the verdant land, "well-watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gommorah." There is, in this moment, the briefest appearance of dramatic irony, a nod to a reader who knows what's coming. (And speaking of the presence of the literary in this passage, Lot's predicament is also a "Road Not Taken"-style proposition—and how he manages this decision will, in a sense, make all the Frostian difference.)

I like the idea of thinking of Lot at this crossroads—or anyone, in a moment of choosing—as two people. He's both himself and his future self. Or, he's both about to go left, and about to go right. He exists as a monument to a present moment just before the future overtakes it, and as a remnant of a present that, once he moves, will be altered forever. We're all that way when we stand at a crossroads, perhaps. I liked the notion of adding to these ideas the visual metaphor of a wishbone—not just because wishbones themselves are two-pronged, but also because a wishbone invokes the idea of luck, which is something that, if not invoked at a crossroads, can lead to an absence of humility. This poem aims to be humble before choice, to acknowledge and honor that sometimes having to pick a direction with confidence can make us all feel like wanderers in the desert.