The NaPoWriMo prompt today is timely. A brief message out of the blue from a distant cousin and memories flooded back.
Like a voice from the past, echoing in a dream,
a dead branch broken underfoot,
trod wildflowers, petals crushed,
like the rushing stream choked by brown leaves,
sluggish with captured mud,
a dead badger by the roadside,
like rainclouds when the forecast said sun,
the nightingale still singing after the night
is done, through the dull light
that fills every hollow and fibre
and tells how the world turns relentlessly
from life to death,
as spring leads inevitably to winter again,
how you were here, then you were gone,
in the flutter of an eyelid,
in the beat of a heart.