Warmth accompanies sunlight
No longer
Sunlight reveals the truth
Of isolation

The alien looks out from dune's peak
Ever shifting
Ever onward reaching

Faces both smiling and snarling
Haunt the edge of perspective
But there's no connection
No link
Not a single shred of song shared

Hardened heart’s crust cracks
Exposing the dried ichor
Of love's rampaging past.

She wasn't old enough for time to
have folded stuff like lines and wrinkles
on her face,
pain had not marked her brow and heartache
seemed somehow far away on that Summers day,

and it still is that yesterday
where children play
and mothers watch
like brooding hens

somewhere.