Lost to life
Lost to life
Feeling the way
Finding summer
Wintered in a forgotten pocket
Weathered by windfall
Beaten by degrees
Where once, before
The blight of death,
Love gathered
Bound in memory
Huddled within families
Collectively spirited
Slow to dissolve
In diaspora.
The future lies
Elsewhere
Beyond distance
Yonder,
Further than before.
In the forgetting
A woman, grown old
Waits alone
Tending an embered fire.
The heat of it residual now
She has minded herself
Healed her woes
With a constancy
Of belief
Stitched herself into the fabric
Of the times
A testament
Of her refusal to disappear
It would be easy
Nobody would know
She is blameless
A lone guardian
Waiting on a dream
The warmth of her welcome
Would light up the world
Even as the old house
Crumbles
Back into the earth
It is a haven.
Still.