With a face etched and scratched
with lines like roads, of all the roads
he had taken in his life, he stared at me
and shook me to the bones.
A face worn by life that had seen life
and lived life, eyes that had loved,
hands rough from work and a back going
crooked with age.
A face you rarely see these days,
a man we all thought was gone.
His wife, standing beside him
in the doorway of their humble
home, greeted us and invited us in
as if we were her own.
Her faced speaking of the children
lost in birth, of the children she nursed
and raised, of the men she loved
or chosen not to love,
her hands patted mine with a gentle firmness
only found in women used to years
of work and love.
As the water boiled on the wood
stove, she prepared our plates
with the food that we knew
was hard to come by.
We sat around their table,
the fire dying down,
and heard stories from their
youth, from the times that were good
and not so good. The war and the
revolution. Of childhood serenity.
Of a land they watched change with the seasons
and the winds. And land they watched now,
changing and unable to explain why.
Why the trees bloomed later or not at all,
why the fish didn't swim in as great numbers
and why the birds flew south later.
Looking into their eyes and listening
to their words, I never felt so whole.
As we said goodnight, all of us knowing
that in the morning we would depart,
I never felt such sadness.
In the morning the wife filled a bag with bread
and our jugs with water and coffee,
and we set off down a road that showed no end,
a road that for all I knew ended at the horizon.
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