"To Walk Their Walk"

Silent gasps

Of yet passed solemn horror - Tortured independence.

Stifled weeping seeps in over timeUnder the cracks of whips and rifle butts,

 Rattling of shackles and groaning bellies.

 A maelstrom of weeping come and gone As a path is drudged in bloody steps.

 Remembering… Remembering as they look back to worse days.

 Agony is subsiding, abject lives grow hope,

 And wounds begin to heal 

 As the traces fade under the hot sun.

 Now, I wonder,

What could let me walk their walk? Red Reeboks, torn and tattered?

 I am far from elucidation.

 No footwear can evoke the past.

 I set out on a quest 

To find what evades my consciousness.

Searching across the land, I left a crimson trail 

 – of love; of agony.

 Across scorching white floor of the Sahara; Razor-sharp rocks up in the Himalayas;

 Diamond-cut coral down in the Great Reef;

 Bone-chilling caps of the Poles;To smog-choked streets of the West.

 I drudged backward 

Through every inch of this earth, yet  No answer.

The Dark Continent that I had to reach could not be.

 Pain felt was buried  Beneath the soil where the pungent smell still lingers.

Or, worse, eternally burned 

 In the flesh and souls of the living dead.

 Heavy legs carry me

Upon soft-soled shoes.

 I Can Never Walk Their Walk.