A Reckoner's Mark

I laid a mark, a track, a trace

In sodden clay, at riverside

Upon the rooty bank, at dusk

A sign, an ancient character

Akin to those my grandma carved

Atop the lintel and the hearth

And on her husband's sepulchre.

Few now can read the elder marks

An alphabet of lowly folk

Who danced the river, sung the wind

Now write their days on cobblestones

In an unfitting parchment-hand.

I laid a trace, a track, a mark

A monument in river clay

That soon enough will wash away

I scratch it not for living eyes

But grandmothers and cypress-roots

And for an hour, the river sees

That still it is my home.