No Going Back

A forbidding brick facade
Fractured eyes of multicolored glass
Somber, with  no inner light
Rose to a steeple that 
Gouged the sky and cast
A hard shadow
Across the blacktop.

The burning sky made radiant the alley
And a furnace glow filled the expedition
Flushed with a fiery reflection of the 
Smoldering sun
His face appeared fierce, a golden eyeshine
Gilded his stare
His soft voice was the tender truth of him

‘Everything I have is yours’

I remained lost in the forest of this new
Reality
Through the streaming crimson light,
Through soft dusky shadows fast hardening
Toward night
Caught in  cross tides of emotions
Sinking slowly to a stillness
In that instant a bird flew up
Thrashing its wings
Startling me 
From my dreamlike perceptions

I looked for the answer
Or an equivalent distraction
In the rouge light, 
The mordant shadows

Only the thinnest wound of the fallen day
Bled along the far horizon
The sky still dark
The moon swimming in the sea
Some secret savage splinter of his nature
Long festering, now flamed to full infection

‘I passed that line years ago’ I said
‘For me there’s no going back’
Copyright © | Year Posted 2007

Poem

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