Your Spirit's Friend

Come with me. The night is still,
a moon unmoving on the eastern hill
and stars fixed in their grid, demarcated
before the vast white window into heaven.

Standing on the girded shoulders of fallen generations,
waking to furious, oscillating lights,
starting sudden from a forest dream,
voices pouring from the windows all around you,
descend.
And on the cold grit path, anxious for lion's feet,
discerning lean root from wending snake,
darkening the upper spine of the aching slope,
I, your spirit's friend will meet you there.

It was a day like any other day.
That is, to be entirely different
but meaningful in inscrutable ways.
We woke, we worked, we owed money for rent,
observed the rote enacting of the plays
and late exchanged our sleep for wakeful haze.

The dog pissed on the carpet.
The machine froze and had to be restarted.
The tea lacked sugar and grew cold untouched.

Despite all this,
you should've been a pair of ragged claws,
or moved unspeaking just beyond our sight,
the Behemoth haunting a sacred grove,
or served as herald for an unseen light.
I heard you there that night
as a moonlit traveler hears the morning bird.
Take courage, stranger, friend, and speak your word.

Also posted here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/8f7g51/your_spirits_friend/