Mud

Freezing the moment, as I carry it forward, like a backpack full of rocks, I search, skimming over the vacant eyes of the ones I pass, their faces looking back at me, exposing the crisscross of wrinkles on scrunched up countenances, rehashing memory. I look for a panacea for the fire and mud, an antidote, a happy magician to come and dissolve nature's tentacles of indifference. The stiff corpse of a bear, washed down the mountain in a river of mud, surrendered to the mother, engulfed in her final say. And now the waiting, until the military men say it's time to go home.