Photo by Sue Vincent
Did I hear the wind whisper
Your name
As it sighed between trees and standing stone?
Did I see
Your shadow cross a threshold
Long buried beneath the empty, grassy plain?
Did I sniff the fragrance
Of your food
Wafted off of a hearth long turned to dust?
Do I taste the salt
Of your bitter tears
Shed for a people long forgotten?
I listen to the rock
Feel the breeze
Sniff the distant salty sea air
Sense your people near
Perhaps forgotten by men
But the land
The land has a very long memory
Photo by Sue Vincent, slightly altered in PhotoShop by me to bring out the face even more…
***
Written for Sue Vincent’s Writephoto challenge. She provided the photo at the top (which I altered slightly at the bottom) and the keyword, “Memory“.
Trent's World (the Blog) 
Pingback: Photo prompt round-up: Memory #writephoto | Sue Vincent's Daily Echo
I always sense an ardent longing in poets who write about the past more than the present or future and am suffused by a fleeting sadness for/with them. x
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There is something about some of Sue’s photos that brings out this side of me – that wistful remembrance of what has been forgotten.. Glad it comes across to the reader as well.
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Really nice, if a little sad!
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Thanks. Yes, though perhaps more wistful for those forgotten days than sad…
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Yes, you are right. I am permanently in a state of wistfulness.
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lol, yep, I get it
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Pingback: Memory ~ Trent P. McDonald #writephoto | Sue Vincent's Daily Echo
Great poetry 💜
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Thanks, Willow :)
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A pleasure e
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Lovely and evocative
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I really like this one Trent. In some places the voices over the land resonate for millennia.
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Thanks. Yes, sometimes what we think of as “natural landscapes” were shaped by the hand of long forgotten people.
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In Wisconsin, the Ho-Chunk People created beautiful mounds. Several still remain near Lake Mendota.
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I grew up in Ohio, which also had mounds. Actually I think a lot of that area did – I know some of the largest earthworks in North America were in Illinois. And the “natural” land the Europeans found here was the way it was because the natives had been working it for thousands of years…
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Thanks, Trent. Very good point.
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The land never forgets…
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It doesn’t. And it will long remember what we are currently doing to it…
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Probably longer than we will be around to do…
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Much, much longer – there will be layers of plastic in the strata as long as the Earth exists…
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Not the way I would have chosen to leave a mark on eternity…
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Nope, me either.
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It does…
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Unfortunately it will long remember what we are currently doing to it…
QUick question, am I the only one that thinks the standing stone looks New Hampshire? It even has the little cut on the lower right for the coastline…
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Beautiful said!
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Thanks, Sadje!
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You’re welcome 😉
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