The Last

By Cliff Lake

 

The Last

 

He is the last:

The last sentinel,

The last warder of the people,

A near-forgotten relic of another day,

Left behind by a mechanized world,

Grown too metallic to recognize his value.

Still, he strives:

Resolute and unyielding,

Here in a backwash of region,

Where the arcane have lingered,

Beings long conquered,

But only exiled.

Their resentment,

Festered in bog and bracken,

In dank places unreached by light,

Continues unabated.

He strives.

With deep instruction and obscure tools he strives,

A bulwark against the weird and the hidden,

A sentry unpaid save by goodwill,

He stands as the last bastion in opposition to the raging foul,

He contains the monstrous that cannot be unleashed,

Or the world beyond this hinterland would be quick consumed.

He strives.

He seeks no boon –

His charge was given him by grim authority,

His vow adamant and obstinate.

His task brooks no abandonment:

The unsuspecting will not stay the vile in his place,

Unschooled and unwilling,

Uncommitted and unable,

Unfit and unconcerned,

Their existence would cease as they know it,

Becoming a mirror in horror of the life they had welcomed.

So, he strives.

A watchman unrecognized,

Save in the hamlet near to him,

Guarding a forgotten entry,

That the mundane places beyond him

May forge on,

Without the disquietude

He keeps for himself.

He is the last.

He endures.

He strives.

 

Cliff Lake 8/21/2025

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2025

Location: Wichita, KS, USA

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