I live in shadows of those who lived long ago
words branded in walls of wood
false prophets unearthing the gardener’s garden.

To look back … it’s all black,
woodlands preserved by historians
each branch touched by an angel
yet you emerge from a distant moonlight breach.

I want to erase you but I can’t
except for short spells beneath blankets of darkness
where I dream … I dream I am dreaming
only to awaken and find you returned at daybreak.

I smell the fragrance of bloom … you do not.
I hear the crackle of fall leaves underfoot … you do not.
What you see I see and more … I see through you.

As I wander through passing of days.
you follow, tall, adjacent to trees.
In some time to come
I will be in the presence of a third

and you, Vertical Man, dying to have a voice,
dying to be me … will implode in the hour
of sundown, erased from existence.