A Scarf around the Neck

“As we progressed, trees grew sparse, 
some advent it was: a way to bring us home.
Another foreign intervention
wrought faintly by interests of the mind;
avoiding storms, driving for hours
into coiled roads, sand making its way indoors—
water sparse, sun-crumbled hides, 
poor sight: bleak faces roamed the streets
with hopes of catching flight.”

And there I was 
seeing every moment pass, 
seeing stone emerge as sand began to fall.
Buildings, homes, old crumbled shelters of mud—
trees that saw a generation grow old, 
and bloodshed and war.
Some place it was, 
I walked across, glanced when I could, 
searching for shade under some enormous rock,
further away from the caves.

I dreamed of some shepherd, 
that walked a dog along, 
and then sent it away to the herd, 
and trekked uphill
to see fresh snow that’d feel on the peak.
There it was, 
in my hand at that moment.
But the snow wasn’t fresh,
ridden with remnants of grass
that was choked out of its breath,
with a fair layer of snow overhead, 
and from light,
with a deceptive layer of white
that imitated the sky.
It was then that I started to grow cold,
and begin my journey downhill, 
to my car, some drifter I was.

Then a rag in red,
surrendering to the wind,
and as I looked along,
a grand view it was:
of hills of sand, and rocks,
with settlements of people that came before.
I stood on some building from the same time,
that stood to witness a couple generations more.
“Have you seen many visitors?” I asked,
grazing my hand on the wood that’d seen many years of wear.
There were once captives in this room I felt,
stripped of their autonomy before a lord,
in the age where rite and faith ran deep in the intellectual spine,
and fostered people that dared to exploit and command.
Such the view was, I wondered if it came at a price:
to never be able to come under the sky.

The colour further plagued my head for days,
along with a familiar urge to throw everything away
as I gazed into the distance deceptively, 
this high from the ground,
seeing peaks of snow, covered in clouds.
That was where I wanted to go,
and kill all ambition I’d grown to hold.
That was the way of the monks, 
that settled in remote areas long ago.
Huge walls guarding their villages,
holding within, homes, temples, and schools of their own.

I was a stranger there, 
pushed down a separate circuit, then out;
made into a strange clown,
ostracised, shouted on, and pushed around.
Was this what I departed from when I left faith,
was this the god we once shared,
what was it that I hoped to gain?

The Sun would come to set again at last; 
everything was lit again, 
but without warmth,
merely shivers and plague,
in perpetual dusk,
however long and hopeful seemed the way.