Interim Champion

Press a coin into my hand and sit low with me. Our combined weight stills the rocking vessel. You no longer belong to that side. It's glory was for but a time. The frontier which beacons is shrouded in a dreaming substance. I rule the in between. Where you came from, I am disallowed. And where you aim to go, I am forbidden. Drift with me across the Styx. Upon the opaque waves, I am father, husbandman, teacher, companion, and physician. All that you will realize on the other side is much more potent that I am. However, the obsidian ripples can offer you no shoulder for your head. Your fare covers all services from fleeting guardianship to improvisational love. Once you set foot on the port of your destination, laughter will be the only reaction to this soon to be forgotten chapter. Yet in the interim, I will satisfy all your transitional need. When you speak, I will hear. When you listen, I will wax poetic. Uncertainty will knit us into a blended fabric that will tare on my return trip. Do not hurt at the sight of your arrival. I am only a trusted guide through frightful passage. My passport is written in a script that invokes cursing. To read it is incantation. Any effort to abandon my boat will be put down with stoning. Do not weep, my oars are made of cedar wood. To each his consolation.