The careworn strings of the Golden Harp
pinged and softly uttered silent tunes.
While a man hacked in his own second hand smoke
his ruddy fingers stained with history
pushed aside his last beer.
The whir of the fans and the stale fog of ale
covered the bar in a misty layer of melancholic dew.
Their problems lurked like angry trolls at a feast
and the bridge that creaked and moaned with
never a holiday, sighed at the slow approach
of another broken man.
The man with his plans nears the crossing
and the clocks chime in a foreboding resonance.
wearily warning as the bell struck decisively.
His watch seemed to have shrunk and the once supple
arms now wilted and wrinkled, protest implacably.
Assented to a journey to a place he did not want to go.
The cold Coliseum stood hauntingly bare.
In the eyes of someone who knew him less,
they may suppose a lot of things about him
and his well-traveled highway
but death is a period in a long paragraph
filled with memorials soon enough forgotten.
As he entered the bridge the troll grunted
and the vapors collected in the sky
and swallowed that passing man.