Recollection

... and happily she played on their doorstep
till day came when she had to go away
to a different country - an alien land
she never knew before, and off they went
across the unforgiving ground in hope,
soles cracking hard on difficult terrain,
dust drying throats that had not tasted thirst,
and under the oak tree they rested awhile,
finally reached the dock on muddy banks
where people scrambled like ants on the barge
and she stood suffocated in the crowd;
of rags and bone clutching her mother's arm!
And across the same desert i walk alone,
pass the same oak - on to the same old boat -
do i still see her footsteps in the sand
now, under oak tree - is it her shadow
that just moved? Or was it imagination?