Shambling - Marti Watterman

[Larry Robinson]

Shambling 

She’d thought the fires had destroyed everything,
the roots of trees scorched by the unforgiving, unrelenting heat.
She’d gazed out on blackened land, seen
only charred trees,
the skeletons of bushes,
and the carcasses of
those who could not flee.
She’d known this land as home for as long as she could remember and now
she cried.

It didn’t have to be like this
but it was.
It was indeed like this,
just exactly this,
a darkening, a death.

She couldn’t know
that it would be like this
until it wasn’t.

She couldn’t know until
a day arrived when sprouts of grass
poked through
the burn, their whispers come again,
offering
a time of greening,
a time for shambling,
a time for leaning into life once more.

	- Marti Watterman