Looking for Lucy Lloyd

While recording lives of others

her own slipped away.

She lingers in sepia as

a face that won’t  fit.

Victorian vicar’s daughter -

poor relation to landed gentry

she understood the shifting nature of ownership.

Hand maiden to the past, her present and the future.

More unsettled than settler -

she anchored herself to the edge of her world

with a pen.

Tied her slender life to the sounds of others

recounting memories, imagined/real -

both are one,

in death.

The /Xam spoke to her, she heard, she saw, she left us:

to catch a porcupine, follow the bat,

the girl of the early race who made stars.

Listen carefully, feel the pause, the gentle breath.

Her urgent hand moves with the click and cadence

of the precious word.

Voice, heavy with the weight of years

runs out before the ink -

and yet it is preserved.

Kabbo. One man speaks for a shadow people.

 Her trials and tragedies

 are also bleached to the bone, crumbled into sand

 blown across land, sea, time.

 Eyes travel over letters and become part of the rhythm of movement

 as voice, interpretation, transcription, meaning,

 become one.