Follow The Spirit Road, The Corpse Path, The End Poem by Aaron Graham

Saint Edmund was for England.

Saint Dennis was for France.

I’ll be no saint, but I’ll follow thee.

If you give me half a chance.

Beneath our shallow’s red sky, come take my hand,

As we wind down this spirit road you will gaze,

Specters of seers, naked in the silence of shadeless sea.

Markers of place and time, the cairns, burial mounds, and masonry

Erected by our patriarchs in due time; the sublime, old fashion.

Relived by the breakers racing towards the sea, vicariously

From where they were first seen: at Brecka.

This path, carved in the earth with shades’ step; unison through time.

In time, is one with paths paved by disquiet magma’s malice.

Flowing still beneath our feet, unfelt, seen only when the struggle;

against numbing cold, halts its rage midstride steam.

Molten stillness is still stillness, and is still peace.

The disambiguated cousin of Wyoming’s agony, cold reality.

Which, itself, has stayed so many worthy dreams, ambitions

And plans; no matter how well conceived, lie flash-frozen and still.

Are silent, resplendent, stiffly unrealized, discarded, and saved

Our Flash-frozen dreams and freezer burned vegetables

Preserved in the height of their decay for all time, destiny delayed.

Never to return to the earth. Just as well, for today no one today knows,

Where, and if they did they long ago ceased to care,

What happens to ice-cycle-failures.

That if, drawn to an arctic Elephant Graveyard

Where the wind sweeps the zero, the waste

Stirring no infertile dust clouds to obscure the display.

Of fragmented forgotten failures.

A mausoleum for plasticizes sculptures, frozen fears,

Unrealized hopes, opalescent despairs.

Preserved and hidden, as our age demands.

Forgotten, and disowned, our original position.

And I tread this spirit road, which grows ever fainter.

Keep my hand if you will, I walk on in this trance

Till truths discovered by men who’ve past

Are thawed from glaciers of medieval romance

One the blank page, at the end of all roads:

I’ll read of my half a chance.