A Poem About a Friend's Troubles

I can show the road and
the ways
all the way on down
to Elysium.

And the dark seas with
fright-white scared tips
nor their climbing spires
in stone
will deter the times
that come
when I'll still be the one
who showed you the road.

There are the bothy ballads
and the great epics
but the one I parted
with at the crossroads,
those roads even less taken,
are the
ragged patch
on my knee
and the gun
rusting on my
shoulder

I lose toes to frostbite
and insist,
still,
on walking there.
All the way on down to Elysium.

I'll step on that ship,
that'll catch that whale,
in that cold span that
reaches to that
cold cold Greenland.
And
I'll peg-leggedly
hobble back
on deck
and look for the
one I lost
at the crossroads,
and somewhere
in the back of my head,
I'll know,
that she's sewn into my clothes.