She spins her threadbare wool while on her porch
Her eyes are swelled and closed, the trait of sages
The charcoal grays between the black look scorched
Her pepper hair is thin from fires or ages
A mystic cradled in an ancient place
Of dead Pompeii, a part of peeling lore
Like weathered paint that’s left the wood’s embrace
But stays a part of what it was before
Whose eyes give answer to a long sought plot
A flick of trickling green, a thread of gold
A tale of wealth, archaic surfeit lost
Remote and ashy, times that have grown cold
But she in all her primal ways have learned
That breaths forgotten speak through cities burned