Post-A

His road to her was a wasteland of rubber tires and a sea of salty bottlecaps
He wrote to her every day without being sure she'd get his messages
Telephone wires were crossed and cut and the airwaves were halted by radiation
Malted bald eagles, remnants of a nation, brave and free
His love was part of the debris, but he didn't know it
Down by the docks, he sat and listened to a man singing river-town blues
He tossed a couple dollars to the man so he could repair the trumpet that he used
Rusted and bent, it sung out across the water and through the bare treetops
"Thank you," the trumpet man said and gathered up his worthless paper bills;
Artifacts of a time when a lot of nothing was worth something and people fought for it
He later took them to the old diner and gave them to the woman who lived there
She laughed at his lark and pretended to give him food as their stomachs rumbled
The man who'd lost love stumbled back to his apartment, weaving among the rubble
He finished off his box of crackers and boiled a cup of water
A rotten cigarette burned between his fingers and the ash fell among dust
He brushed off an old photo album and prayed, "Why? Why, God, why?"
God answered- as a barking dog in the distance
The chemical sunset filled his room with swirling purples and reds
He fell upon his cot and turned his head against the doom
A flower in the jungle bloomed but he didn't notice
His world was hopeless and he had lost focus
On a burnt earth it seemed like Death's door was all around him
Ambitions were scorched along with the place that he had found them
He wanted to get behind the wheel of a car, but hadn't seen one drive in years
Drying tears every morning from the stinging smog, he was a lone scavenger searching for enough to get along
"Enough to get along on down the road," he thought, but there was never enough
And all this stuff from another time was running out
And coming out of caves and sinkholes were wild animals to snatch his finds
Ravenous wolves and dogs of many kinds
He dipped his musty canteen into a secret spring he knew
And she seemed to know him too
She greeted him with clear water and a symphony of crickets
He crouched and crawled among the thickets, first to find and then to leave her
He told others of the spring, but they didn't believe- or perhaps they didn't care
They were calm in their despair and boiled river water
And then they gave it to their sons and their daughters and pretended it was milk
As the man struggled through the woods to get back to the road, he heard a voice
"Where'd you get that water?"
That water- that gift from the spring that kept him walking and let him remember what hope was
He turned to see a wild animal with stars on his shoulder and a cross on his gun
The man clutched his canteen and thought to run
The animals had charred the land and now they want the spring
To dig a hole and take control and make it their thing
He wouldn't
He couldn't give the spring away and spoil her truth
He had toiled through the roots to find her
They would bind her
He turned to flee the animal and leapt through the bush with what energy he had
Thunder sounded as the animal emptied his clip
The man stared at the cloudy pink sky, thought of his goodbye and took his last sip