Natalie Solmer |Water Talk

When she was lowered into the ground

I followed as always, but

the Miriam I knew

was dust 

no longer walking among her people.

I, too, no longer wanted to walk, to shimmy

inside the people. Instead, I sank

and shrank, and when I let go

of the soil, it sighed a gritty sigh 

of sand. 

I flowed back in time

to the Sea of Reeds, found my river

far away from the people and their mountain

place of the misdeeds of their fathers

place of the rock. They never guessed I’d want

to become bitter ocean. 

Here’s what it took

for me to get there—the vastness

of their forgetting.

I get so hot with anger

I become a cloud. And now I spin.

Where will the wind send me? Where 

do people grieve?

When the stone is struck, will I return?