The Travelar

I’m running a little dry on ideas for articles, but I’ll try your patience with a poem that I wrote a while ago, and Lordwilling, I’ll be writing articles again soon. -JLM

The Travelar
By Jonathan L. McCarthy

The sun rays fell hard on the rock-dirt path,
Where stood a lone travelar, his face gray.
It poured its heat on his sunken head in unmerited wrath,
And beat his hair to the color of moldy hay.

His blue cracked eyes look up with tears,
At the hill which rises before him yet.
He closes his chapped lips and hides his fears,
And steps forward where few feet have ever set.

A foe behind him stealthily steals,
Fits an arrow to the string,
The dart flies heavy, it strongly wheels,
Into the back of the crippled ugly thing.
He sinks to his knees and groans,
But none there do care,

None seem to hear his aged moans,
And only the sun does see and glare.
But at last a hand, it seems we see,
Touches softly his withered cheek,
He looks up suddenly, with eyes that are free,
And there is joy across his face that cannot speak.

It seems one helps him slowly to rise,
Upon his wrinkled feet to stand,
He stares defiantely at the sun’s dark lies,
And kisses that nail-pierced hand.

Then fixing his eyes at the top of the hill,
Where a glitter that is not the sun shines,
He grips the dirt and with gravel his hand does fill,
And he pulls himself up the dragon’s spines.

Blood trickles down an aged rocky stone,
And mixes with the red of One before,
Who climbed that face all alone,
And heavy hatred, not earned, bore.

And now at the very top the travelar trips,
But a dear sweet hand grasps his own,
And into His embrace, he quietly slips,
"I am always with you. Never are you alone."

"And though the sun may fire his flames every day,
And the archers pierce your back in rage,
And they lure you time and again into dark dismay,
I am with you always. Even unto the end of the age."