BURIED IN A FACE

I saw her yesterday

sad-shuffling through the dry-blown waste

on legs gone bad, all bloated, puffy-pale

Sluggish blue-river veins

branched out to nothing points

Her grease-dulled hair hung down in stiffened clumps

and thick hands fumbling, calloused fingers slow

stretched out to take the change, with mumbled thanks

  There in her eyes – was that the spark

that made her mother smile and croon?

And swallowed up in seamed and furrowed cheek

two dimples once stamped artless on

a gap-toothed grinning face?