Another Long Walk - Patrice Warrender

[Larry Robinson]

 Another Long Walk
 
 
Given enough time,
there is always another long walk,
another proof of civilization's lie,
and all must prepare to run,
for no matter where you are born,
the sky can crack and drown you in fire.
 
The prophet said it would be fire
licking at our heels next time
and it is anyone’s bad luck to be born
where death comes cloaked as a walk
that goes on and on, until lives run
out of breath, stumble, and lie
 
in barren fields with nothing to lie
between them and scorching fire.
There is nothing to do, but to run 
as fast as you can, to outdistance time
and this nightmare of a walk
where death is borne
 
on wings of silver and hope dies, unborn,
among hobbled prints that lie
in mute witness to another long walk
that crushes hearts into red grit of fire
and strangles cries of rage that time 
after time, someone must pack up a life and run
 
to nowhere. This walk, too, shall run
its course, new stars will be born
to light up the heavens and, in time,
history will write, not quite truth, not quite lies,
of who and why and how all became fire.
Some will say there never was a walk
 
of death, that all people are free to walk
a thousand miles of blackened earth, to run
a marathon of fear, while fire
power presides as midwife to newborn
cries of war. Dark clouds gather and lie
low over fallow fields, where time
 
has run out. On distant horizon, fire is born,
from smoldering ash left to lie untended.
The time has come for another long walk.
 
	- Patrice Warrender
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