Sixteen Miles (To the promised land)

Pacing, caterpillar steps.
Trailing in yellows and greens.
Patterns tracing bleached decay of bone.
And brittle skeletons,
Toasting in the sun.

Two by two and four by six.
Evens for luck, and companionship.
Two hands for a reason
Four fingers on each branch;
A total of six squirming digits.

Sprawling on red roasted
Peppers split down the middle
Charred in places and sweet all over.
Our backs rose-hue
Breathing the grass in shallow psalm.

There is a distant ticking of a transparent clock;
An image far-removed.
The water passed our faces, the
Depths shaded beneath a thunder of lashes.
Foggy brush strokes, saturated and blurred.

Shaking broken doors with a promise.
My hair is in my eyes and
I cannot see a thing
With your arms outstretched to me.
Smiling voices snaking between the weeds.

Familiar breathing shakes my rib bones
And its vibrations, a well worn shoe.
Imprints on my lips and creases in my cheeks.
Map and atlas and tracing pencil to paper.
Waxy, thin, transparent.

Nails insist on combing this place.
There are crowds speaking foreign and
Dust is in my teeth. With lips closed
I continue to breathe, to swallow, to exist.
Still, I feel the grind.