Dipping soles through puddles-
Underbrush on cut corners whips calves-
Pant cuffs tear on broken stairways,
stairways that Escher between decaying boulders,
mutated and overgrown and sprawling to nowhere,
like crushed spines of forrest wurms; Paleozoic rust.
The sun licks the back of my neck
and the tick-tock of wrist watch and foot step alike
flee back into the boiling clouds of jade and
criss crossing strikes of flaming sepia spears.
The trees are hurled down and away and I ride
the hard, crested, back of a creature
who slept between the creases
of the beaten path.
