The water spills,
she wrings the towel and softens it with soap.
Three years ago
 Ethiopia dried to a memory of sand.
She remembers a sky pale as bone
a long day’s walk and an empty pail.
 she has carried her love,
a continent of grief tendered to her fingertips,
its grip of pumiced stone.
Loss, she says, is understood,
it resides familiar as your mother’s long arms,
 that infant born bloody and still.
Now she whispers stories of a country filled with rain,
of green beginnings, moss thick as regret.
 She rinses the length of her back,
the stairway of her spine,
the room is full of women resurrected,
waiting out the slow and gentle flood.
In the far corner the ghost of her sister dances,
her mother raises her hands to each bright drop.
As the puddle beneath them grows
the dancers bare their ankles to the slow growing pool,
  embroidered hems sodden with leaves,
soaked with the memory of rain.
While outside the clustered roots of fir trees
search for a long forgotten river,
and  the thirsty music calls the water home.

-- Lisa McIvor