it still feels like it was just a few minutes
ago yet decades had passed
since that time
the

place

still had that
century old benevolence
somber pines didn't look to
have aged a day late dawn
had left us a misty
ground

speckled
with crackling I could
smell cedar wafting on airs
from far away chimneys a
woman talked to a
shadow as
she

went
about tiding up
and I wanted so to say something

but

it didn't seem appropriate to be
reminding any one of the transition we
face between the here and after my wife
snapped a couple of picks before I
drifted back to the
car

a week or so later when
the photos came back I was
comparing them to the ones
taken on our first visit
that again
I

discovered the
woman
and

there she was

I
wondered
if she knew I'd only
been once to see my mother..?

***