Bare Feet and the Echo

A chewing cow ambled along the dusty road
A bell tinkling at its neck..
Its tail leisurely whipped the air-
the flies no longer followed.

The girl walked beside the cow,
she was barely eight years old-
she hummed a village song i did not know
Probably her mother has sung it for her
and her grandmother before that.
Or maybe they sang it in the fields
or whispered it to the grasses they cut
or to the ripples that formed in the pale
as they drew water from the wells..

The song that was sung
through a million generations,
the song that would survive them all
A tune that harboured each inflexion
of voice, of pain and celebration..

The cow mooed, the bell tinkled fainter.
The dust that arose between the sight and the vision
had no memory of footsteps..
Time would level it again- untrod .
Bare feet and the echo of an echo.