Rusty-Haired Vagabond

You had red hair like the dusty iron soil beneath the

foreboding boulders of this valley. The riverbed,

parched by the kiss of drought, was your highway

into and beyond this forsaken residence of life.

Mesas and spires of unyielding stone pepper the

landscape like the freckles painted upon your face

by the fiery fingertips of the sun.

But this was not your home – you've drifted

for miles from the grassy yellow plains that

rung in your words with the bells of fondness

and remorse most bitter.

I heard you murmur about your little soldier

as you dreamt by the hearth of my dwelling,

and you would always awaken in tears,

crying out in a language I still cannot understand.

It was nothing, though, you told me. To you,

it was just life. But I would never believe you,

for I was too enthralled with the mysteries of a

peregrine wayfarer. Your past loomed over you

like the gloomy shadows cast by the cliffs scattered

helter-skelter by the hands of innumerable eons.

And yet I was no aid to you – just an eccentric,

canyon-dwelling stranger.

But, dearest rusty-haired vagabond, when you

set forth in the murky hours before dawn,

I resolved to follow, in faith and in blindness,

and thus I stand before you, prepared to carry you

onward after the salty, arid winds have left you

thirsting for water and freedom from desolation.

Come, shall we seek your young and timid little

soldier? Let us find her, rosy-faced and weary

before ill fortune can rend her pale and lost.

Stars for which to Aim

The woods are unfriendly in the spring–

they strangle and obfuscate with their vines

and branches. Strangers lose their way

when last autumn's fallen leaves revive

and tumble onto the trail

to make it disappear.

I've lost myself here before, and

you were lost too, but we did not

call each others' names – no. No

lost children were scampering about

these woods. We were only wanderers–

specks of flesh and cotton amid a

ubiquitous verdant haze.

We stumbled serendipitously into a clearing.

The vines wore you beautifully, but

the leaves clung only halfheartedly to me.

I remember the way your voice chirped

and soared as you romanticized the sky

and whispered about your closest secrets.

The color of your world bewildered me,

as I spoke only of the ground and the things

that lay beneath our feet. But we were not

so different, not so distant, for the sky
would be no sky without an Earth from which
to see it, and the Earth would be no Earth without
stars for which to aim.

You stayed with me, through passing

hours and taught me how to watch the clouds

rolling by. You, a stranger, raised your hand

with mine in its grasp and traced the outlines

of tree trunks and jagged rocks around us.

We saw night lurking on the horizon,

and though I worried, you minded not.

The way out, you assured me,

had to be around this tree or through

these bushes, but this forest kept well

its secrets. So we settled for the impending

evening, and traced pictures in the stars

until the moon bade that we slumber.

You disappeared when my eyes had

shut, though I could still hear you breathily

lamenting the plight of our stars, forever

immobile and unreachable.

At last we drifted into dreams, though who

first entered, I remember not. I danced with you,

stranger, atop the forest's canopy, and I wonder

with whom you might have danced behind closed

eyes.

A tender requiem of rain awakened me in the haze

of dawn, and you had disappeared – slipped through

the spaces between my fingers like so many sparkling

droplets of rain.

As I Sail

The ocean breathes gently with an ancient rhythm

and whispers lullabies to rivers and fires.

The waters roll over and tumble the seashells

and write endless epitaphs for the lost.

Thousands of sailors and warriors on journeys

gave their last kisses to the freezing brine.

And under the guiding arms of a lighthouse

we steer beyond the shoals that are their graves.

I remember, as I sail, the ship that had left me;

the hull met the shoreline of a distant island.

A storm began to blow and it left me freezing,

but it left me with a newfound home.

Stranger

A whisper in the daylight rolls into darkness

and fades away into the stars.

Inward flow the echoes

and outward show the scars.

A figure in the rain, somberly walking,

treading by the roses in the garden.

Old memories of fires and gravestones

trickle down into the soil.

But footsteps and echoes now rest beneath the roses

and soon they will rot away.

But even if that grave were to come unraveled,

we'd find nothing but shadows of the past.

Oh, dearest stranger, the road you had traveled

had miles of shattered dreams to come.

Home, yes, home, the wonder you had wanted

now lies beneath a pile of broken ash.