Wednesday morn

Blood tears from a still chill sky ooze down
settling round my feet
shriveling in the grim morning sun
aching for a reprieve

the willow
bereft of even a scant scarf for her frozen limbs
holds her head high
and cries


my arms stretch wide
and gather to my breast
the withered tears
with salty fear for the oppressed

a child stands near
clapping
“for Tinker Bell” she says
then disappears

in her stead …  a coffin …
a cauldron …
spewing putrid smelt
fed by sneering
Dark Riders

and on the coffin lid
burned in foul oil
one word:
“Inana”

I clap too – fiercely --
a madwoman …  sitting alone
hugging a pile of dead leaves
clapping in the silence

the sun shifts, casting a shadow
of one lone branch
embracing my sagging back

one wren calls
an echo from millennia past
“this is the way the world ends …”

Now we are three
the wren …  the willow  … and me

whither the time before time
that Inana and her daughters gifted us?
It had to go somewhere

the wren is spent
merging into the squalid End
so only two –
the tree and me

the shadow cast by the willow branch
dissipates
wrapped in the soggy Nowhere

my clapping makes no sound at all
for there is no one to hear
even I am not there
… or here

“not with a bang, but a whimper …”

only a vile tule fog
obscures any hint of
Where




                                                   and the silence


(c) November 2016 MaryAnn Shank