inheritance

In the manner of olden times we
walked silently over oft-trodden
sidewalks while our thoughts, distracted
by their lure, rained misgivings over
the roads to be paved by semblances
of ourselves in a mist-driven
future. The return home is marred, but
always, by these familiar traces
of unsettling intimacy on strangers'
faces. While, slyly,
unconsciously, our elbows touch, we
talk so flippantly of the ways of the world,
and chewing apart the complexity of lives lived
in simpler environs of modern inconveniences, we ignore
the frayed feathers of an old
crow above our wandering thoughts.
Like simple stones under the ever-roaring
foam of currents that we do not feel, for their
familiarity we take in stride, the traces
left upon our palms the prophecies of our forefathers.