The Footprints We Leave

Edna Mae has passed from this world
having died like she lived – quietly

Her warm clothes gone to the local SPCA
I will see her sweaters and sweatshirts
walking the streets of our villages
having been gotten at bargain price
at the Fall Sweater Sale

the special drinks she could no longer
drink have gone to the local Food Bank
and I will meet the people who have
drunk unto life what she no longer could

Her shoes will travel as she never did
wending their way to Kenya and to
other women living hard lives
trying to make their way and support
a family with a little help from far
away friends – fitting that these shoes
be cared for, repaired, worn, and sold
by women just like her that she never met

Kay has gone on to serve another woman
in need of her and they too will become
friends and more than friends in the
small space between them named kindness

Family have divided the rogue’s gallery of
pictures that adorned her walls – never to
be together in the same way again

Bobbi and Gary are in the house now
where night before last, unbeknownst
to me, one of her closest neighbors,
the chimney caught on fire . . . again
and the fire guys came out to take care
of their ‘best customer’ – Edna Mae’s
house – an old gal once so fine –
and silly as it sounds, we all smile
for the memory of the stubborn chimney
that would not be fixed – and amidst the
smiles we remember the woman who
called this place her home – and it is good