Can You See Me?

An Original Watercolor by ZenMama

Hidden in the corner of the layers of my life, nearly invisible as I descend into the earth.

Purple for the angry Oklahoma sky when it herds homes like an unmerciful shepherd amidst the pleasing prairie of golden wheat, whipped by the winds, stripped of its sins,

to an era past filled with red dirt and wrath.

Many years before, gold turns to grey

and the journey ended there with five tribes
arriving on a trail soaked with tentative tears.

The red dirt greeted them and opened up

to receive them as they lost their birthright

and could no longer do right in the light

of the lives left in unforgivable years.

In between as imperceptible as me, a hint or a glow

of a sunset trapped in a place where light meets dark

and the tall grass and Heather once touched by a 

daughter cannot begin to untether from the shadow

seizing the light or the light forbidding the dusk

and whether one is better or if one should ever

dare to question a sunset in the midst of their life.