Dust & Shackles

The winding staircase in the minaret, is missing a step.  Virgil's bones await the sunbaked robes of the next scalers.  Where once the double-helix throve in spawn and steam, where lizards were green, as luminescent emerald, in the hot and balmy fream, and snakes curled  round stamen in petals of the dream... now there is a cracked approach with littered bones midst a sea of sand baking under the dog star... and this lone tower lurching at the vapid sky.  The key was lost, many whorls ago, when the rains still sprayed and the children played, they hid it in a secret spot, that wasn't locked, just forgot, and running home to dinner bells, aborted shells of snails and stick traced runes to race toward the setting disc in the last degree of summer's firmament.