Like Echoes: a poem for the approach of Nisan

These are the days,
these final ones,
when I can feel the gathering
up of time and pain,
when our crying goes
opaque, flat and
non-reflective.

The animals feel it.
They low at odd times,
thrown by the plagues
and the hope dashed by
gathering stones
and obsidian hearts.

Still, I can smell
spring, like an echo.

Perhaps, this is
what God sounds like -
that barely-there
sound that rests
on my skin
like water.

We are running out
of desert and
time, a wilderness of
waiting, which is the
hardest part.
and I wonder
if our voices
are merely echoes
to God,
like spring,
or water,
and rest too lightly,
and fade too quickly,
and disappear,
like echoes do.