, or we don’t talk to the ones

who

know and survive

          It is past time

          to call you back again

          The old ones are dead

Like water bright

in the eye

           The brush of memory is too wide

           And the surface is shimmered and wrong

Long afternoons listening

to the old woman about 

her old women

           The algae of remembering obscures

Again and again.

Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis  © 1985