The Journey in a Journal of Leaves

I.I

A boy on the dank marshes of civilization
stretches and yawns as he peers into the
fog.  Marked by the petrified silence of crumb-
ling shell-stone upon the gouged, tear-stained
mound of time's evidence, her languid blood
claims the nature of his shadow's rest, becoming -
in essence as well - the dark reflection that
grips his ever-struggling heart.

Roots of a mature hawthorn tree could fill
coarse gouges of the mound, but
becoming drunk on night's embrace
petrifies the horrors upon the sleeping
and allows it to wallow in the throes of
the forever-interrogative: why?

The sun cannot burn the fog, but the
hazy shadow of a path leads toward
wherever. The boy must choose this
path since he has no desire to participate
within her reflection. He steps upon the path
and SLAMS onto the uneven and slimy
bricks that watch with unblinking eyes
as his newly distorted face puked his red
payment as a toll for travel upon his merit.

inflamed muscles pain his progress to the
boy's standing position while the marks on
his face continue to write their protest upon stasis stones.
Little tombstones lay scattered and broken
the roughly hardened clay
as a reminder that clay is red for a reason.