Panning for Gold

 

I travel on the road

to nowhere.

 

There are old people in wheelcheers

queueing up at the food banks

with hopelessness dawning in

their eyes.

 

There are the hapless children

of the street,

wayward and indifferent to the

suffering they inflict,

hollow is their journey.

 

A growing army of those

on the margins,

desparate for joy and relief

from the unrelenting grayness,

from somber mornings and the

nightmares that plague their dreams.

 

I travel on the road

to nowhere through

miles of parched terrain,

towering hillocks of blackened earth.

 

Men, women and children

features darkened by the

coarseness of dirt

crouch down on aching knees,

relentlessly searching for any bit

of gold that might be

trapped within the fabric of the

beleaguered soil.

 

I travel on this road

to nowhere,

into a future

overtaken by humanity's

horrific conclusions.