things are crusting,breaking
mud dun-colored
cracks in sheets like pottery
thrown by the world in the shape of drought
arid, dry and barren
crunching beneath my old boots
they have carried me well nigh seventy years
of wandering

I stamp down to break the honeycomb
of parched mud
some syrup of past rains
oozes through
now limned in dust
forgotten
an echo of rain

a memory rises up sharp and sudden
your face lined and creased in grief
your mouth moving
my ears frozen
silence in my dead heart
an echo
of us
C Patricia Sky Bellefleur 2017