Mordor

His sorties

Conducted under

Cover of darkness

Collating possessions

Small errands

Visits to allies

In territory

Alien and dismal

To him

The small, worn allure

Has faded

He knows better places

Exist, mostly within himself

And there were distant voices

Who called him to his own

Potential

Away and towards himself

Sees people abraded by the

Slow grind of life here

He is an ambassador

Holding a tear shaped bottle of

Light within himself

The spiders of his earlier weaknesses

Held at bay

So he enters

Gathers and then returns

Back to cool forest

The same burst of warmth

When he sees her again

The only thing he threw

To the lava

Was his bullshit

And he knows

He’s been quite the orc

In his time

But there’s no shame

In working towards

A throne

A crown

A kingdom

Where the sun doesn’t burn