Toward the Kingdom

TOWARD THE KINGDOM

It was at the forest’s edge he turned

to ask about another path. He leaned 

on his walking stick, suggesting 

that a second look at the map may turn

up a misinterpretation of the key. 

It was—admittedly—suspiciously 

simple in its one-word invective: 

Follow. What followed were few definitive

delineations of the way, blazes 

largely left open to traveler exegesis, 

sparse instruction regarding how 

to navigate a bum knee or the may-

flies which bite this time of year. 

Hobbled and bitten, it was here 

he turned around—at the forest’s

edge—and as he predicted a second

study did, in fact, unearth a swarm

of various mis-readings, confirming

their suspicions that they were crazy

to abandon home to find—supposedly— 

a kingdom. It was with this in mind 

the troop began to fidget and disband.

Soon there was just one—the hobbled

             man—impaled on the barb of that one word.