I’m down at the Crossroads, but the Devil is late…
He must be on another date.
Think I’ll sit a spell.
He’ll come along, oh he’ll come along
I’m too good a treat.
Just you wait
He’ll come along.

Time is a crawl,
the sun dropping like cold molasses
down a stuccoed wall.

I spy a crow staring at me
from across the road
he sits in shadowed tree.
He knows.
This crow has seen many a men such as I.
Whether from the East, out of well worn dreams
the West, where disillusion abounds,
the South, where love was lost a hundred times.
or the North where the hidden want to be found.

All I know
is that I’m boned tired.
As raw as a bone can be
One, any dog would love to gnaw.

So I sit, for there is still
somethin’ deep within
residing, abiding the day.
And all I need is for him
to set it free.

A thousand times a thousand
A million sunsets,
A million souls
bartered and bought
I’ll just be another on his roll.

My ears never hear an approach
As my back feels his grin
licking
I turn to him
as the sun drops away
into hell I suppose
to keep the fires burning
below.

Nary a foot separates
as he sits
legs folded delicately
as if he’s always been
He looks left
He looks right
He looks behind
Then ahead at me
and smiles
so confidently
like a fisherman
with his catch
flopping on the deck of his boat.

In that moment, I see,
he needs me.
No matter the grin
or the dark eyes.
He is afraid

This creature
is Lost.

He can do nothing
I could not.
So I jump up from that spot
Give him a grin of my own
and turn with a tip of my
hat to the crow.
Who only caws at me with
a laugh,
as I walk the road that
faces me.

by Philip Wardlow 2017