A year later
Everyone had lost someone
Grief had bound us by it's hearth
Our hearts were sore from being pummeled by sorrow
A year later
Everyone had lost someone
Grief had bound us by it's hearth
Our hearts were sore from being pummeled by sorrow
We lost hope itself
The disease took everyone it touched
And it touched our healer
We gathered to send him off
To the ancestors who left us for dead
We had hoped
That he would find us a cure
But everything he did, killed us faster
All the herbs, shrubs, trees were fighting us
We stopped trying to get better
As he did for others, we laid him
On a plantain leaf- lined bamboo raft
To send him off on the sacred river
With his dying strength, he grabbed his remaining son
Who will now be infected
His shout came out as a raspy whisper
"They have finally come, the people that understand the language of the trees"
