Never Say with Certainty

Aimlessly I wondered
Yet somehow always forward
Against the push of the river
Into a stranger's world.
My footprints scarred the crunchy-cold snow
Caught red handed
in the act of trespass

I knew them, did they know me?
A child before the wise
An outlander, a foreigner
I had not yet earned my keep.
On eggshells I treaded
To acquiesce each inquisitive glare
whose eyes I could not see.

An Inferno chimneyed from my chest
To further flaunt my impudence
Like smoke it licked
And furtively churned away
My heart-drum ceased it's relentless call –
Frozen as the still morning air.

How inconsiderate to wake them
from their well-earned rest.
The thousand years that slept before me –
Countless gray, marbled lifetimes –
Now adorned with frost.

But there was little left to mourn

I knew them, did they know me?
A student before scholars
A blind eye before judgment
I had yet to earn my keep.
Then suddenly I knew,
Enlightened by the Dead,
This silent, sepia grave I wandered
was not the life ahead.