I take a step back, pivoting on my right foot

to remember behind me a clearing in the trees

by the old apartment complex

where dirt raked over by lifetimes of weary

American walkabouts 

snakes down hawk-eyed, single-minded

toward the old muddy river.

One might brush aside broken branches 

blocking the way like so many nails and thorns

but I know the way.

At the bank where acid rain and sewage 

can lick the dying summer dandelions

I try to cash a check for one epiphany 

before it starts to rain more violently.

A suitcase probably designed to hold a laptop

lies abandoned by a crushed beer can and

a newspaper clipping filled with prophesies

written to a dying world about a world soon to be dead.

I look inside but no glint of metal shines back

at unsuspecting hopeful children eyes.

Turned over with a fallen stick 

lying in a field of blood nearby

a giant slug is stuck to the back of 

the faded leather bag dropped for

God-knows-what-reason.

A snake slithers away back up the trail,

I hear a hawk screech into the gray sky,

and I swat a spider hanging from 

the nearest tree almost alive in the sunset

bearing the weight of the world.

Brown grassy mountainsides;
full of yucca and sharp burs and
stripped-naked trees.

(Your buffalo have all been murdered, America.)

atop this vertical precipice, the edge
of everything that’s never been,
before a white and faceless
Void: the sore thumb of a
boulder. A gray and
ancient troll.

There sits a changed and stoic
stranger wrapped in a wool blanket
against piercing winter wind and frost.
Sharing my thoughts. My organs. My perch.

Walking along this trail…
there can only be death.
I check my silent moving
watch. Time to turn back.