INTO THE WILDERNESS

INTO THE WILDERNESS

Into the wilderness blindly I go, dragging my ball and chain,
Dodging the bullets of grief and loss, freezing pellets of rain.

Into the lair of the jungle beast, foolhardy and freewheeling.
On my own sorrow I hungrily feast, stealthily I come stealing.

Tiptoeing like a frightened gnome and buried beneath the debris.
Covered in ashes and draped in my losses like a careless leaf in the breeze.


Once the sun shone so high in the heavens and smiled on my life
like a favorite child,

Only to carry me here to this moment, to leave me languishing here in the wild.

All my great wisdom and all of my love songs are silenced by the deafening din,
Frozen stiff in the clutches of nighttime, destroyed by the bone-chilling wind.

Into the wilderness, naked and trembling, silenced without the hope of a prayer,
Dodging the gunfire of age and infirmity, clothed in my camouflage of despair.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2008
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED