by Zachary Rahed

Vulnerable branches snap beneath time-worn sneakers
A lone wanderer sighs
Beside him, run tributaries sparkling like Swarovski crystals
Wriggling, snake-hissing streams
In the trees, a chickadee chirps a flashy Morse code
Pleading to a sad, exsanguinated sun

Green mountains salute the vagabond
Our banished wanderer
Into territories not slightly unfamiliar
As when he, a precocious child
Was blessed by philanthropic evergreens
Or otherwise cursed by a forest of decadent, flute-piping dreams

While climbing up Bunyanesque granite steps
Up Humbaba,
That famed gigantic guardian of the cedar forest,
He falters
Tripping on his calloused hands and knees
Bloated with wretched pain
Sweating near Sisyphean tombs 
In an unfeeling wilderness, where vagabonds 
Belong to nowhere