Echoes

. she parked her blue truck in the driveway right where I parked my truck many years ago she stepped out of the truck and headed for the porch just like I had done many years ago she took off her sunglasses, paused, and then put them back on just what I had done so many years ago she climbed the steps to the porch and did not turn her head to look at me through the window just as I had done many years ago and I could see her get a grip on herself and plan how to say it just as I had done many years ago and I knew just as my Mother had known and it was then I realized .....................it's all echoes .....................we're living amid echoes .....................amid the reverberations of all the remembrances .....................amid the traces and the vestiges .....................amid the remnants of times past .....................amid our own ghosts and shadows she came in the house smiling just as I had done many years ago and I knew even more surely just as my Mother had known even more surely what she was going to say and my heart sank, my life sank, all the shine in life sank just as my Mother's had she tried to act as if nothing was wrong just as I had done years and years ago in the same room in the same house my Mother's and my Father's house my house now that they are gone but they are not gone they live here in the echoes and the shadows in the yesterdays that are the todays but right now it was we who sat there facing each other Mother and daughter just as another Mother and daughter had sat there many years ago and now many years later I knew what my Mother felt so many years ago it's all echoes raining down on us you know this don't you .....................it's all echoes .....................we're living amid echoes .....................amid the auditory afterimages .....................amid the reverberations of all the remembrances .....................amid the traces and the vestiges, .....................amid the remnants of times past .....................amid our own ghosts and shadows she opened her lips and I watched the fearsome man in black cape and hood enter the room silently behind my daughter and sit in the corner silently holding his scythe across his black robes and I wondered silently if my Mother had seen the same fearsome man in black cape and hood enter the room silently behind her daughter and sit in the corner silently holding his scythe across his black robes because it's all echoes raining down on all of us you know this don't you .....................it's all echoes .....................we're living amid echoes .....................amid the auditory afterimages .....................amid the sounding and the resounding .....................amid the reverberations of all the remembrances .....................amid the traces and the vestiges, .....................amid the remnants of times past .....................amid our own ghosts and shadows waiting for the dread words to fall from her lips and break my heart and behind her I watched the glowing one in white robes enter the room silently and sit beside her silently hand on the hilt of his sword ready to do battle ....................echoes ....................it's all echoes ....................in this house ....................in this heart ....................where there is no future yet ....................and the present ....................suspended over an abyss ....................is swallowed up in echoes . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~©susan williams,2016