Wanderer

My lute cracked
when I saw the memory
of your beloved face
echoed in the river.
She still plays the same old songs,
but now with a rasp,
a smoke-and-gravel hue,
the grief of flamenco.

Our dream child
is a tattered maid now, her lullaby
twisted by our fate
as a basket-weaver binds the rushes
that grow along the riverbank
in weeping, boggy strips,
the low lament
of the Soleá.

Rachel Westfall
February 7, 2012