You were never so Great.
Swan-song down-draughts of Lift
Feather-flung dippings of dive
This river-embrace of years and tears.
Your bread-on-the-waters women still
Share their far-bank love feast
And gaze into numinous exile-epiphanies.
… On this bank your motherless child
Glides into the sunlit shallows of backwater days.
Eileen Walke, 2006