The Wayfarer (poem)

The Wayfarer

Where miles-long grow embattled limbs

Above the sea, salt-hardened, east-laden

Shading pathways wound through sand and scoured stone

Each stone an anvil shape, each tangled crown

Untossed by wind

The wayfarer, led in hunger by a ghost

Stares aloft to see a figure clad in spider webs

Rigid with the stories of the dead

He that approaches tears his garments

Threads of charred flesh as he feels them

Whip-ends of deliverance

Peace

That, he tells this mute, this sage

Draws hands now gloved in silk

Away. Beggar’s hands that leave

The seer undisturbed

“Yours is a lie as well”

The splintering of an ocean’s iron weight

Fills this grove with a searing mist

He sinks in the lee of a seated form

A gust, and from the branches

A filament filters down

Haunt of Thieves: The Wayfarer

Miraculous

(2017, Stephanie Foster)