Directions Unknown


And should you walk...

Upon scorched earth,
what might you feel,
with bare feet
now scarred
with callouses of time?

Today, not unlike other days,
affords trails well-trodden,
where hidden playgrounds of youth
are but ash and cinder
atop buried promises,
gilded routes once trusted.

Looking skyward…

Global guide signs point in all directions,
their posts of charred insistence,
like paternal obstinacy,
refuses to admit folly,
even as their gathered intel,
from the likes of doctors Spock and Watson,
now flutter as yellowed pages forever distant.

For what prepares innocence…

This capacity to absorb,
to trust authority,
whose surety of agendas,
at times conscious,
often of unabated primal instincts
serving with duplicity's velvet tongue?

Still…

The rutted paths of direction,
like aged depressions
wrinkling the face of history,
will outlive,
outlast,
and stretch beyond civilization's struggle.

All while…

Please!
Cries the waif stumbling through barren exposure,
find me but a grassy field
where blistered soul and feet might rest,
where mirages cease to exist.

All the while…

Through swirling dust
and acrid air,
a child’s hands reach out,
urging patience forward
as its emaciated shoulders press forward,
pointing with gentle fingers toward the horizon,
wanting to lift eyes to a sky of freedom,
but faces only more clouds of dishonesty’s acid downpour.