~Roads~

This is roads

Coming together

Coming apart…

Braids of fools-

Fools’ imaginations

Grasping the vine

From sunrise to sunrise.

I am like the tiger

Reaching for the pale hand

That holds its feed

Ready, if circumstance allows,

To bite or kiss.

I need to cut free

Like maidenhair

Like grass seeds

Like common children…

I need bells

{Of silver, never gold}

To hang about my limbs

To let them know

I am here.

‘She comes!’ they say,

Blinded utterly,

As if, by chance,

The winds came by and plucked their eyes.

They don’t see my back

Bent like the winter trees

Tingling in the sun-warmed hall

Of imagined strength.

They don’t see my fingers

Swollen and thick with cold and pain,

My legs, stiff with hidden chill and pain,

My eyes, dark and shadowed

Overhung with hair like willowy boughs

Of ebony and dead grass.

I feel old

Older than time…

I look into the future and see only the past.

I look into the mirror glass and I shatter.

All roads lead back,

And I am a child of Forward.

If I could run faster than the winds of change

Would I become my own hemisphere?

My heart is a road and a labyrinth.

You tell me it is long.

How far, my friend?

How far?