Watching

We watch emptiness,

the dried hull of fertile lands

states of a parched world unheralded,

disrepair too far gone.

Dirt blows on winds that never cease,

sucking moisture into nothingness

becoming clouds so very high above,

we cannot touch them

they are not ours any longer.

We add water to the cracks

praying for some growth,

anything to slow the erosion

as helplessly we watch,

hopelessly we know what shall be.

We are the faces that look within for something,

anything that will turn this tide of darkness

and we speak our prayer words to the sky,

asking for relief at any price,

but we had already paid once so long ago

and pockets lay empty like the dirt below us,

our prints the only sign that we had been

until they too

were brushed away on the fickle winds

that carried us into everywhere

and nowhere all at once.

We write the testament to our being

wondering if someday and somewhere someone shall find

the strange inked symbols that will be studied,

will they take heed of the history,

will they laugh that we had been nothing

silly beings who could not stop time

to save themselves,

who could not learn their own lessons

marked hundreds of years ago,

by poor souls that we have now become.