Iron and Ice((++))

Today I walked ten thousand miles in the snow, the dirt and the mud and I walked them underneath the angry, beaming and glaring sunshine of the cold Atlantic north. I walked ten thousand miles because I thought you went that way, I thought I might catch you might head you off at the destination but you prove as elusive as ever, as difficult to grasp as any good metaphor. I thought I was close this time, within reaching-distance and certainly seeing distance-like, but I was wrong; oh, always wrong, for as I reach this gnarled hand outwards I wonder, will it come back the same as I sent it?
Somewhat different, always different, never static; the hand changes as the walk changes, and though I can't always see or feel or taste that it's different, I can tell it is. I know it is. I do not live in a black-and-white monochrome redundant 50's television show and I do not walk that path that those forefathers of holy walked, no, I walk this twisting and weaving and cold and bitter and frightful path, walk it each time as though it was the first time -
and
I
pray
the last time.