The wanderer handed the teller his note:

“Crisp, clean, random-numbered

leaves, untraceable—What’s my face

telling you?”  The teller rolled her eyes,

clicked her tongue without alarm, ready

to charm with her green-and-whites

this hobbling fool in her parlor. 

 

Unable to speak, cursed to write only poetry,

he’d arrived with colored bandages—Indian summer’s

subtractions—wrapped smartly around his head. 

This barely walking, non-talking torture, he

wanted a fortune, an ensured happy ending. 

 

It would cost nothing less

than a charred piece of his heart. 

 

But the traveler had already torn

and worn himself beyond destitution, his

fevered destinations pulling him through

all the wrong seasons; he’d been strung up

and wrung by Eden’s vines (implanted in him)

and bent through Heaven’s hypercubed dimensions. 

 

Fate, slaked:  Forever through his veins, ice

wine would flow, reminding constantly, forcing

him to be sweetly pleased with his worst mistake:

 

Waiting to approach his would-be bride

far too late.

***************

Want more poetry?  Please check out Spring’s Fall.