Her face is creased

so many images

good and bad

so many memories

like endless seas

seed in a shaking hand

famished birds land

they’re her only friends now

the only ones who visit her

on the old park bench

with its chipping paint

so small and faint

is she and the bench

day after day

in her tattered clothes

whispering in smoothing French

no family

nowhere to go

she wished it weren’t so

but now . . . until she dies

she watches her friends

up in that wide blue frontier

up in those skies