Inside a Stranger City (Poem)

It came upon him suddenly,
a city as a a snake rearing up its hooded warning.
The glass quieted, stopped its crunching,
and the fiery sun's eyes went to slits.
Rough stone pocked with weeds tumbled up and up,
hatched and slashed from dust, grain and glass.
Domes rose wearily in half-circles,
peeling and breaking as old onions,
welcoming him warily.

"Now how did I get here?" He questioned himself,
one brow and suspicious eye lifted to the city's gate,
hanging  halfway on hinges,
his skin sand and sun-stained. 
"Did I sleep alone along the way? Did anyone guide me?
And where is that din of noise that crossed such a distance?"

With his hand resting and waiting on cracked wood,
he turned his head far sideways without moving his body,
squinting behind at what might have been or where he could have traveled,
and thought it odd that the trees he had loved had vanished.

Moments later, head bent forward,
the man with shadow-work written with the sun's drop took a step,
and pushed open with one hand the doors whispering a thousand stories.