The Citadel

        Walk through ruins
        antiquities...
        The earth underfoot
        includes rocks, rubble, and dust,
        pebbles and bits of pottery.
        Shards of archaic lives.
        I reach down
        and my finger's flesh feels
        the warm porous clay.
        I lift it up.
        Long ago this fragment
        was a whole
        hot from the kiln.
        Long ago another woman reached
        and her finger's flesh felt
        the warm porous clay,
        held the earth in her hand
        a vessel to fill...
        as fluid
        reflections
        flow.

poem copyright ©2000 Anne Selden Annab

 

Published National Library Of Poetry, Anthology- 1992