the journey men reached their solemn destiny as fine and private as the grave
the Holy Mountain
to a man they fell to their knees and gave up silent soliloquies
one spake as Zarasthrustra
a man passed believing he had touched the face of God … a cruel hallucination configured by the Devil
among their number was a preacher, he anointed the body with holywater and gave up incantations to the heavens, a verse from the Holy Qu’ran, a fragment of the Pentateuch and the last page of the gospel of St Mark
they burned his body and decorated the heavens with his bones and sprinkled
his ashes still glowing as embers across the sky and lit up every star in a brillaincy of autumn hues to compete with the sun and his 13 jealous moons
they lit a small blue fire of Zoroaster their reasoning to keep them warm and huddled together under a carpet of stars
they drew that carpet over them
in the morning they drank the melted snow for nourishment
they buried their other members of attrition with due ceremony yet economic as their funds were as dry as the Dead Sea in flood removed by centuries to the left of time providing a theory of succour not wealth salved wisely in escrow beyond their grasp
to assay the horizons in the dead of night they knew well that as the pathways of their travails ended in a facsimile of heaven as any man prays in lofty cathedrals pointing out God in the firmament just distal to his focal point of hope that they must carry on
still their wanderings bore little resemblance to the tableaux of their departure inchoate in time from a bleak stage worthy of escape yet bearing an uncanny resemblance all the same as if all their travails were in vain as an accident which should never have begun with actors exiting left and right or by any portal fated to them from the same venue
many lay dead as the length of histories are measured in multiples of ages gone
beyond recapture and turn to ash and dust and other carboned fates
in the morning they departed down the slopes of the Holy Mountain scittering like disabled mountain goats
their horses shod cantering to an uncertain past or some other place more condusive to rest and dreamed they could never come home again like a pride of lions shamed
not one man credited their stories with a single filament of truth on earth nor in heaven
they had come full circle as no man is a prophet in his own land
their fire of Zoroastor flickers and burns to this day
Flynnpoetry 