This poem is a dream I never had. Somehow my subconscious seems to have found a way to usurp my general reasoning. Enjoy. I may edit the crap out of it later.
“Treading Mud”
He stands there like a crow.
At the rusted gate, rapier against thigh,
he utters the entering song.
Lilting lyric, so little breath,
bouncing, the spring of soft notes
as they ride high the sky.
The doors part, a red dust waterfall
sending crimson steam into the air.
And he sets forth, a statue in motion,
inviting into his lungs the iron pang of
…history.
Within the fortress the courtyard is empty
but for a six year old girl in a green frock.
With ocean blue eyes fixed she asks,
“Do you know who you are?”
The dirt turns to swamp,
swallows him up, he treads mud,
the echo of the girl’s voice
ringing with every earth-choked breath.
He reaches his gauntlet hand out,
grasping–flailing–
star etched sky giving way
to a more original kind of night.
When all falls silent and cold,
three short words resonate in his mind
as the world pulls him below.
He tugs at them, makes them a rope,
his hands chaffing, now bare, hot blood
flowing, anointing his passage,
wearing the words like dragon wings,
he flies, he flies, he soars out of the muck.
Russ Legear – July 2008
