• Aimlessly I wondered
    Yet somehow always forward
    Against the push of the river
    Into a stranger's world.
    My footprints scarred the crunchy-cold snow
    Caught red handed
    in the act of trespass

    I knew them, did they know me?
    A child before the wise
    An outlander, a foreigner
    I had not yet earned my keep.
    On eggshells I treaded
    To acquiesce each inquisitive glare
    whose eyes I could not see.

    An Inferno chimneyed from my chest
    To further flaunt my impudence
    Like smoke it licked
    And furtively churned away
    My heart-drum ceased it's relentless call –
    Frozen as the still morning air.

    How inconsiderate to wake them
    from their well-earned rest.
    The thousand years that slept before me –
    Countless gray, marbled lifetimes –
    Now adorned with frost.

    But there was little left to mourn

    I knew them, did they know me?
    A student before scholars
    A blind eye before judgment
    I had yet to earn my keep.
    Then suddenly I knew,
    Enlightened by the Dead,
    This silent, sepia grave I wandered
    was not the life ahead.