For a friend, lost, but soon to be found…

Catching up with her shadow

 

Her mornings started with the same walk

she took from back door to fence and out to

*

the field that rimmed the property. There she met

herself on the return and never spoke more than

*

the simplest of hellos. She left that to the meadow,

slowly sun-soaked and ready for feet and the hamstrings of early day.

*

She’d walked this way before,

aloof, spendy in compliments mirror-bound.

*

It helped her face a faceless day, reflected back at

her, nose in her face.

*

The answer came when she looked and, for the first time, saw

only smoke, a haze of unknowing.

*

It perplexed and fascinated, stunned and silenced

the breath yet to draw. Then she turned away

*

just long enough to guess at what she’d seen.

Enough time had passed to make return possible.

*

Now, the smell of time in her nostrils, the caress of grace

under her feet, she returned in time to 

*

catch up with her own shadow.