2 of 3 Sonnets on a Journey

There is one more coming as a prequel. I’d swallowed bitter tears and they fermented; I cracked and what seeped out was oily, black. And reeking foul; offence and sin repented, Was I hand? Or eye? Or mole upon your back? For even custard rats would stay a ship In storms this mild and sunny, but you fled Before some wraith’s imagined iron grip And left me with the demon you had fed. But see I’ve heard the tales of sacred springs All steaming deep in distant Russian snow And in this house where cloaks can pass for wings I’d never see their warm aurora glow, So while you wait to freeze neck-deep in ice I’m off to wander roads and juggle dice. Crawling across an endless fallow field- A city of junkyard bones and mangled rust, Poking its balding head above the dust These trickles of nervous sweat had left congealed. Perpetual dusk confounds my frantic forage For any redemption from loud monotonous gales. I scrabble and scratch with broken and bleeding nails Through puddles of scree and thick insipid porridge. Distances writhe and scutter across my vision The night is descending with terminal patience and malice; Wherever it lands all the crannies turn shadowed and callous And suckle upon the gargantuan teat of derision- I spit out some dirt and the winds send it back in my eye, Then all of a sudden a something flutters by.