Sehnsucht

Our careless young man steps into a forgotten alley

Dark somehow in the mid-afternoon

Deafened somehow to traffic’s whine

Clean somehow from citied debris

He is led he knows-not-where, by he-knows-not-what

Labyrinthine spaces between commercial properties

Then between brush

Then between trees

Through the trails and off

With footfalls ponderous

A confused amble on needled path

While a sweet whistling and hushed whispering

Draw him deeper

Now hear the faint sound -

Of gathering autumns and dewy springs

The crickets of summer and winter’s sharp sting

The corpse road

Candlemoths spark above a polished pond

Now see reflected -

Another youth’s face contemplates

Lined in the curse of greatness

Tortured with fever

Coarsened by sun and sand and death

Desperate with afflicted pride

Dismissing the fluid veil as faithless mirage

The water undulates in waves

Drifting scents of pitch, of sea

Lands of coconut, rum, and passion

Fingertips steal golden touches of time

The moment before ship and captain are riven

His tides to driftwood turn and tumble

The water troubles

Another self meets his eye

And winks, thumping damaged breastplate once in greeting

Scorched with the unwavering fire of triumph…and grief

Clicking his tongue in report to a weary horse

Battleblood specked on white flank

A love-token woven between saddle and scabbard

He leaves a royal sigil, tattered, on the soil

The water ripples

Another man reclines by the pool

Hands pillowing head, staring up at the leafed vault

Smoke-smeared verse mumbled from behind his lesepfeife

Adrift in dreaming love and loving dream

He finds the silent prayer that is oblivion

The pool turns dark and still

I am the last, he thinks

A genuine sorrow settles in his soul

And so - shaded by trees that were not there

He lingers for a moment more

Yet in time,

With the unique burn and burden

That knowledge favors

He will turn back

He will not see the titanium and gold helmet

Peering from a field of stars

Reaching toward him…

Hydroforming the landscape of Mars