Footprints - Gregory White

[Larry Robinson]

Footprints

Today’s footprints are mostly shoe prints.
Sometimes there are toes and heels
indented on ocean beach or river mud.

But these footprints now walking away from me,
me standing where the African river once was,
before cities, before memory, way before
that impossibility of time when 
distant ancestors had distant ancestors.

Fourteen women, two men, three children,
meander through ash along that river, after
Engare Sero had exploded once again.

The river overflows, mud
fills the tracks, hardens, dries.  Silt
flows over and over, again and again.

They trekked into eternity
until we found them at last.
We see one woman’s feet turn,   
she’s looking back.  Others move past,
neither stopping or turning.  Slowly she
turns again, rejoining the procession.

We don’t know why she turns.
>From primal fear or for a crying child?   
What happened those 15,000 generations ago?

What makes me look back these days are
honking cars, screaming sirens, cursing by
the insane, someone calling my name,
pizza smell escaping from Cafe
Tantardinis, a cold breeze on my nape. 

Might her fossil track be
autobiography, inscribed in 
ancient mud calligraphy?
Was she the first to know
Here, I live, Here, Now?

And who will remember me?
I am here, now, walking
by the river, shoes off,
sinking in mud.

	- Gregory White