The sun was brightest,
The air was hottest,
The rain protested.
She was there.
Old, wrinkled-
A raisin
Dry tendrils of snow-white wispy hair,
Bottomless hazelnut pools of emptiness,
Tattered clothes crushed by age.
She was there.
She was a nameless face-
Fading away into the atmosphere,
Like the shrouds of carbon dioxide that burry our cities,
Exhaled by you and I.
Under that ancient tree,
Tall, imposing and vast-
She was there.
Bending down-
Her bones creaked in silent protest
Fingers shivered, pinching
Black-blue pearls of disregarded fruit that
Fell from the tree-
Tall, imposing and vast.
She stood up again,
A shattered figure that somehow was fixed.
She stood back up-
A hawk without its intimidation,
A swan without its grace,
Her back slightly hunched,
Her thin, dry lips-
lines of trembling palms, quivering,
filled with the unknown berries.
Her clothes, murdered by the weather.
She was there.
She whispered words-
A vanquished language silenced by the air and
The brigade of vehicles and ‘modernity’.
Her eyes, for a brief second,
Met the jade green leaves,
buried under layers of dust-flavored icing,
swaying freely in the cool pre-rain evening.
“are you vanquished woman, are you vanquished?”
The jade green leaves seemed to whisper to her.
She didn’t answer.
She simply repeated her cycle of collecting berries,
While the world past her.
She was the fleeting image in the window of the car-
Forgotten as soon as she was seen.
The air is frost-bitten.
The sun is dim.
The sky is a battlefield of grey.
The jade leaves quiver.
The black-blue berries shudder.
Her skin shivers.
Passing by faces whisper.
Falling raindrops glimmer.
Her body gets stiffer.
Passing by figures bicker.
The smoke in the air gets thicker.
The daylight fades quicker.
The day is over in a flicker.
But she was there.
kairos 