Future of the Soul

I enter the cage and free the one I came for, who looks askance and leaves, eyes holding
all that’s visible within a body’s orbs.

I know I am dying. I cannot walk without thinking, who once ran through the back country,
danced in a city’s cabarets; dying,

and only this one can save me. Alma! I cry and the moon replies. The one I freed says
nothing at first, holding out both arms.

Now the days are growing more precious, nights so quiet the stones may think, the river
churns and ripples and no one arrives

but Alma. I ask, Why do you stay? 
This is my home, she smiles, built to house your heart with mine, there is no other way.

I am what is left of the man I was.
Alma leaves to hunt and to gather, and deer follow the tracks Alma leaves behind, two feet

I unshod and kiss, and I am kissed
completely, so I may rest and work when the words occur, with ample time to say them.

Alma loves me, saying when I die her soul will go with mine through the corridors of Limbo.
She is my Alma, I am now hers.

(5 November 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander