Shadow Of Her Face

Shadow Of Her Face
© Surazeus
2018 03 23

Sitting alone by the stream in the woods,
the girl who shimmers like mist on the lake
writes the name and story of every person
who ever walked alive on spinning Earth
on every leaf that falls from the oak tree
to drift away on the stream of lost time.

I hear her singing in the silver mist
and though I walk in curves around old trees,
following the siren spell of her voice,
I float somewhere in the flash of sunlight,
yet never see the shadow of her face,
so I kneel by the river of lost souls.

Fragments of memories float on the stream
of ceaseless change, each leaf discarded mask
of people who died before I was born,
so I assemble stones in winding spirals
to map the way home from the Underworld
that guides my journey back to glowing hearth.

She is not there, the woman with no face,
singing at the hearth I built with my hands,
where she was sitting when I left to join
army of warriors to defend our land
against invaders hungry for our fruit,
so now I sit alone with smiling skulls.

I stare into the sky at swirling clouds
that flash white lightning in the pouring rain,
and shout at God my father said was there
to ask why he does nothing to restore
peaceful paradise of our garden home,
wondering if he speaks in the gusting wind.

I feel the fire of the sun in my heart
urging me with rage to wrestle the wind,
so I howl at the blind indifferent rain
as I fall into the abyss of despair
and wake at dawn to the chirping of birds
so I laugh when understand why not.

I stare at trees sprouting from river shore,
intent on reversing the flow of time
but rivers continue to flow down hill,
and sunlight continues to beam my face,
and apples continue to sprout from blooms
and I continue to look for her face.

When I accept that she vanished from time,
I walk nowhere along the winding stream
to find young woman with long flowing hair
who twirls and sings among the apple trees
and falls gasping into my gentle arms
so we kiss for a thousand years in rain.