Three Steps

Three Steps

Three steps in to a trail with cluttered roots and

Untrimmed bows ducking down and head around

For time to take three steps, to move a bit

In leaves and strips of time growing over

Mud soaked lines, feet are sore, hands are numb

Toes are wet, the road is no where near done

Carving out these three steps, make them now

With so much left to parcel

Move my body into a place, easy for others

But not for me, to greet this air some others

Could just put one foot in front and see

Bedroom doors and rocky crags

Blockades of seventeen still there at thirty

Wishing for simple and only getting shards of glass

In each footprint and connected to a pace that will

Make this place a decade for a single ankle

To turn the corner of the morning

Still not sure if this leg is going to make this journey break

Into three steps more than I have ever had before

To move from here to there but the kudzu is grown

The vines are sewn across the opening like a stitch of a mask

That frightens and blasts an expression that I am not meant to ever pass

Yawning in anger as the time slips the smile of a stranger into teeth gnashing

Confrontational at the concept of me passing, Freedom in doubt

Eternal in border that no matter the year there is an order

And in that I am single, I am spaced alone

Three steps behind growing older just over there

Never closer, remain bare and naked standing wretched

Marked tattooed at the flood of the sun’s spot light through the canopy

I am to plant there within me, silent and brooding

These moments are consuming places, I shall never proceed

I wait like a castrated plate resting on a countertop

Empty but for the flesh around a seed gone to rot

Picked from a tree beyond my reach given to numb digits

Incapable of gripping, a mouth gagged and dripping

Inside with salvia dried out in the drama, witnessing a slow motion movie

Of a nectarine slowly consuming itself in a bacteria bath to blacken and spread

The red into darkness cast, feeble and frail, withered and stale, futile to move

In this straight jacket life, three steps too many in this trodden down plight