paths.

former trails traveled,
eidetically projected in the back of my head,
sweeping into the sand and bright.

newer paths lay on
sonorous notes drifting through a rough trail,
miles ahead, miles ahead.

souring vestiges
of elderly feelings, traveled past, left winking
in summer waves of heat.

they scrape about,
flinging tense worries in puddles of drought,
asking me to look at them.

lighter thoughts float
up into thin atmos.

Scared treed memories
of dogged, unmissed pasts devolve and curl away.

I stand on a wasteland,
happy for its solitude, searching through salty tension,
padding across memories and memories and time.

I seek a key, a compass,
a guide through these vast deepenings.

Tired eyes of a dusty child, its me at 6,
holding a horsehead on a stick, tattered vest
and a wild west hat.

this has been discarded, tossed at random,
out into the wastes.

I look at myself as I remember and
feel the surge of bare softness
in a patch of grass beside a gray wooden fence.

The trails all lead to me, as I feel a clap
in and of my mind, and realize that I can parse it.
These clear or cloudy memories are me.