Wading into the Darkness

Soon it will be my turn to enter the stream

By Foto Duets on iStock (image licensed by author)

I sit alone on a jutting rock
Nasty brown, muddy river water
lapping at the mossy base of my perch
The far bank shrouded in mist
Cool fog roiling off the tormented waves
What will be there when I cross

My journey to this river’s edge a long one
Years wasted crawling through the dirt
Self-inflicted pain putting me face down
on a road only I could see
Many years ago,
I scrambled on the high peaks
Wandering paths that forever led me
higher and higher toward the clouds

But the years faded behind me
and endless need to rise higher left me,
then the warm plains calling me down
I walk slower these days
The boy who ran past life now gone
Nothing left but an old man
lingering in whatever days are still mine

I entered the flat lands late in life
Standing tall amongst the sunflowers
Feeling the hot earth on…