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.