A brutally worn and weathered lonely leather boot
Lays on its side, half caught in the murky mud.
Vines and weeds beginning to weave their way
Around the dulled curves of the worn heel
Sticking up lop-sided from the moldy, grey-black, dewy earth.
The humidity of the moist, decaying leaves
Rising all around like a wheezing breath
Being sucked in and out
Through the locked jaws of purgatory.
Cans and bottles, now yellowed and dulled
From the persistent rays of the blistering sun,
Scatter along the hollowed plot of a suburban wood
Like the skin cancer speckled on the face of the lonely homeless man
Who calls this home.