Turning Point

These are hungry hills.
The river nurses a grudge.
By the collapsed bridge, drunken sentries
Argue metaphysics,
While the desert sighs inexorably up the valley
On moonless nights. 

Whom will you trust
when your shadow goes AWOL 
from its post at your heels,
and Conscience defects,
hawking compromising videos
of Hope and Desire’s 
shabby threesome with Envy
on foreign street corners,
when even your court
of fawning excuses
encircle you,
backs turned,
arms folded?

There is silence,
and then there is this silence.

© Larry Haworth 2017