Hey, little frog
on your pad in a pond
surveying your kingdom green
You don’t have a golden ball,
no princess came to call
and these lily pads are all you’ve seen
You’re just fine in your domain
and have no reason to complain
with your fine banquet of flies that teem
So you sit strong and alone
on your very own green throne —
just now swims up a queen

On the face of a tombstone there
I saw an epitaph made for evermore,
its letters eroded and worse for wear
and covered by moss that grew long before;
the trees’ roots twisted around its base
to nudge the old stone out of plumb line
and wrap the tomb’s body in wooden embrace
while draping it all in verdant vines:
The permanent stone turns slowly to sand —
a world without end that brief time spanned

In an aisle of a great stone church
by flickering light of candles perched
under finials and arches tinged with gold,
flags fly for blood shed on fields of old:
They wave with wistful dreams of war
and tell of great esprit de corps
in a house made holy for a prince of peace
whose dreams of love they speak of least

An old man climbs into a vintage car
to smell the sweet upholstery,
caresses the steering wheel’s steel bars
and grips the gearshift **** of ivory.

He pulls the heavy door to close
it and hear its deep, dull iron clunk
that fuel-injects him with a dose
of chrome-clad metal hunks.

The streamlined car doesn’t move.
Still, it takes him on a favored trip
down a grey road well grooved
that his whitewall mind-tires firmly grip.

Its tires spin in grooves and sing
a well-pitched tune of rolling on.
Seams of concrete slabs now bring
the bumping heartbeat of this song.

His greying hairs match the road
which stretches out into his past,
leading him back in freeway flow
to a love that he’d made last.

For in a leather rumble seat
in a sleek car just like this one,
he’d kissed her hand and lips to greet
his sweetheart hunnybun.

She smiled as bright as high beams
at her motorheaded beau,
with wide eyes that stole his dreams
and made his fuel more quickly flow.

With hair like raven asphalt
framing lips in brake-light red,
in her saw he no faults,
but thanks to him, she’d end up dead

in a shattering crash
as they slid into a tree,
his youthful driving brash
and far too wild and free.

He swore to never leave
her by that bleak perditious street.
Resolved, he chose to grieve
her and keep the rumble seat.

So once a year he sits in this car.
He never drove again.
But each time it takes him far,
right to where his hunnybun had been.

On the day of all souls in the fall
as leaves lose luster to winter’s bane
my father’s shade returns to call
while I walk along a splintered lane:

His memory murmurs in a darkened nook
of years of yearning and wasted days,
as the distance that filled up the book
of our lives still grows as I turn to grey.

The care he’d showed I did not feel
as the pillars of our bridge began to crack.
Too late, I turned back to heal
the fallen span that we now lacked.

By then his old mind’s lantern had failed;
the new light I’d shone back went unseen
and broken arches into a chasm trailed
where once a golden bridge had briefly been.

Across the valley, dark, deep, and wide,
a spectral stretch of stones appears
to shine as a silvery coach now rides
across, to bring two sundered shadows near.

Now on this day of all souls missed
by those who find themselves left behind,
one faithful departed returns to kiss
the forehead of a son’s reopened mind.

In a nook of an old stone church
a cherub basks in the vesper light —
A childlike innocence for which I’ve searched
that seems to slip into the onset of night
Fade not away, you sweet dear boy
and never lose your childlike joy
Fight, fight
the snares of twilight

The village church was built to last.
It would stand until Judgement Day.
Its oak rafters would hold the roof fast
above the faithful who there prayed.

The grey stone is carved with inscriptions
of verses of scripture from Father God
who would grant the faithful benedictions
as they knelt on stone flagstones in awe.

The faithful had built for generations
and for generations still to exalt:
A gold, stone, and mortar salvation
rising up to a heavenward vault.

The stone walls were decorated, gilded,
lined with the lives of the saints
whose blessings had once gently lilted
out of the colorful daubs of paint.

The saints’ faces long faded away
and the statues have hair of green moss
while a few arches still try to stay
up like stone ribs of a body now lost.

The vault now lies open and broken
with a clear view to the old God above
and its grassy shell is now a mere token
of this cathedral built to love.

The broken flagstones are now a green mat
and the nave is barren. Its grey pall
belies the colors in abundance it once had.
There’s no more shine of gold at all.

Yet the grass that grows there is still blessed
by the faithful in ground hallowed below.
I’m touched by their hushed songs still sung, caressed
by soft breath of holy wind which there flows.

The plaster peels around the windowpane
as Virginia creeper clings, hangs low
on the old stone wall that crumbles, veined
by the cracks from the hourglass’s flow.
The weathered wood of her rafters frame
this battered house that’s fading away
like the troubles and cares she’d contained
which are silting fast into the sandy soil.
The creeper‘s five leaves grasp like a hand:
Gaia hugs this house in her tightening embrace
to fully devour all the follies of man
until only the quiet creeper remains.

A starless swart of night
has draped its murky veil
above my temple mount —
but the house of holies’
lifting light lingers on.

Its window eye shines bright
to lead upon the trail
that guides me to a fount —
its waters cool and ease
until new break of dawn.

Peering through a old stone gate,
its face well carved, in prayers attired,
I saw a golden wall of late
before which stood cracked streetlamps retired,
their warming light now long gone
yet they still glow stubbornly on

The king of what was stands in silence
and surveys his sunsetted realm.
His spine is straight in stiff defiance
of the twilight of the kingdom he’d helmed.

On a plastered pedestal high he stands
surrounded by the waste of his times.
Carved into it, once acclaimed in his lands,
was his name, now covered by vines.

The pale sheen of low sun as winter nears
casts shadows across his etched face.
Its grooves grow deeper year after year —
he’s the gnomon whose shade this sundial has traced.

He takes no note of the thorny brambles
that have entangled his fixed stony feet.
With flinty gaze and wrapped in a mantle
of granite, he keeps watch through storms and sleet.

Now stripped of his titles and even his name,
the proud king of the ruin’s still there.
For while the long night has broken his fame,
still he stands, marked by his unbroken stare.

Stuck on blackened spikes
and under stormy seas.
“Let’s go for a hike,”
my wife said to me.

Her sliver of sunlight
breaks through my fog,
a sparkling invite
to go for a little jog.

On a bed of autumn leaves
and crisp wisps of dew
the trees us receive
while I from black withdrew.

The flicking fire in the hearth
pops and cracks a wispy smile
while its embers send their warmth
into the stone house for a long while.

The chimney curls with silky smoke
that snugly signals a cozy place.
The walls are paneled with old thick oak
to safely hold us in wood’s embrace.

This warm retreat’s stout red door
is made and unlocked by my inner eye.
Its stone foundation and sturdy floor
are crafted well for brittle times.

Pull up a chair and join me here
in this secret safest place of all —
it’s in each of us, in constance near:
Take some rest in your heart’s great hall.

In a royal garden in autumn’s decay
I met a mottled statue of a mad king.
His crumpled crown of leaf inlay
was perched upon his head tilting.

In this motley vale of fallen leaves
and maples barren of budding boughs,
he bore a scepter of willows weaved
and twisted, by mystic rain well dowsed.

The bleak stony face moved its rigid lips
to command his hedgerow kingdom’s thralls
while his blank eyes in their stare transfixed
on me, whom he his newfound jester called.

Though lacking arms, his majesty raised
a marbled finger in mocking command,
dictating his sane fool to jape, be praised
for being the maddest of mad in his land.

Poor Tom’s a-cold, my mouth let out
as he haughtily replied with a cold leer,
no patience for my well-reasoned doubt
that I should bring this fell despot cheer.

The wan harvest moon began to arise
in a suitably strange and lunatic way
while donning a cunningly dim disguise,
eclipsed by the shadows of the day.

I saw: A shroud, a pall, a veil of the mind
had set upon my innermost light.
Must overthrow this bleak tyrant’s kind
and cast down his terrible mental might.

Here satyrs were sane and nymphs unloved.
This empire of absurd has ruled long enough.
I resolve to break through the darkness above
and call the callous old monarch’s bluff.

As the dream fever finally broke
in the setting of a sudden sunrise,
from the blackness my mind awoke —
at last I’d had the courage to open my eyes.

All I want is a bridge to the clouds
so I could climb up, high and away,
to loose myself from gravity’s bounds
and float above humanity’s frays.

Let my mind be a kite to catch the wind
and pull me up to the light above,
freed from the weight that kept me pinned
instead of gliding like a carefree dove.

A jet black shellac record spins
seventy-eight times a minute.
Its label bears a lady ’round the pin:
She strums her lyre pictured on it.

It’s a flat earth of forgotten tunes
that spins on an axis of steel
through heavens lit by a lyrical moon
filled with the stars of bygone years.

The label’s lady of the lyre
smiles up from her grooved time machine,
her strums reverse the stars’ funeral pyres:
On each rotation her lyre gleams.

Beyond the grave, voices I hear
defy the dark passage of time:
They sing, resurrected from yesteryear.
Her lyre scores each lyrical line.

Each scratchy hiss and tiny pop
I hear from the disc’s dust and scars
reminds me of a radio telescope
that points up to distant quasars.

Alas, the needle drifts further on
‘til it reaches the groove’s final string
and then the tonearm waits for a new dawn
when this time machine once more sings.

The very last leaf of the fall
gave her level best and all
to shine as bright as she could be
and spite the winter’s hoary freeze.

There amongst the faded stems
of lavender that’s lost her lilac gems,
this leaf has nestled in a pose
that rivals summer’s crimson rose.

A leafy lantern of orange and gold
alit on silvered frosted ground a-cold
to blaze forth in her final victory:
An exit worthy of ancient histories.

Just now I broke a teapot.
My mind was in a spell:
The shards look back forlornly,
the cracking sound was its knell.

It was a treasured heirloom
passed down from age to age,
touched by hands from times of old
but now I’ve turned its page.

It had served my family well
etched by tea and good times spent.
For now I’ll just be grateful
that this old *** came and went.

The temple at sunset
holds the pale light
to store up the glow
and endure the long night.

The mason works the living stone
to shape it for its slotted place.
Pale flakes of rock fly as he hones
it to a rough-hewn sandstone face.

With chisel and mallet in granite hands
and flinty grey eyes to plumb the line,
the rock gives way in grains of sand.
He chips and flicks one blow at a time.

His fingers trace each pit and dell
that he’d worked in with his iron tools,
while nostrils fill with chalky smell —
light dust clouds through his workshop move.

As one by one his blocks are laid
by his apprentice at his side
to fill the role for which they’re made:
they’ll be joined in one more arch of pride.

More arches form as months move past
then building up to many a year:
They mark the time of a life well cast,
his mason’s mark left on each stone sheer.

Each arch arises, pointing high
to the master mason of us all,
who carves and fits in his workshop sky —
by shaping, marking us in his wall.

Then piece by piece, the church takes shape
while grains of sand from worked stones fall;
The mason, now old, his final finial makes
as falling sand an hourglass recalls.

And here I stand in centuries hence
to spot the mason’s mark he left behind,
his arches pointing upwards whence
the mason built his final shrine.

The blacksmith works the iron ore
with tongs and hammer on anvil’s brow:
Within his forge’s fiery core
grows metal soft, with carbon endowed.

The coal turns grey, much like his beard
drawn out by age to wiry lace —
a silver mine that roughly rears
from his craggy quarry of a face.

In his chest, the same fire roars,
a molten furnace fueled by air
****** in by bellows, lungs engorged,
then exhaled in the bright sparks’ glare.

The chimney of his mind is filled
with sparks that dance, a glowing throng,
arising through his thoughts that thrill
to the rhythmic beat of his anvil’s song.

Reflected in his clouded eyes,
mixed in with soot and sweat and toil,
the steel sings out in joyous cries,
its notes ascending to a boil.

For though the years have dimmed his sight,
he sees through the smoke and flame. He knows
how he will find fulfilled delight —
when he with music his craft bestows.

The moon rose up
and the moon looked down
She’s watched the Earth
spin round and round

And kingdoms rose
and empires fell
The moon just waxed
and waned a spell

Her one bright eye
has seen it all —
she’ll still be there
long after we fall

A-walking through a burial ground
as autumn’s bleak winds buffet me,
I hear plainchant that makes no sound
come from a church behind bare trees.

As I wade through seas of fallen leaves
that blanket tombs of fallen folk,
the whitewashed church’s lichened eaves
are loosely draped like a priestly cope.

Behind the church’s wooden door
comes silence sounding out a song.
Its words unsaid, no rigid score,
to the whirlwind this primal hymn belongs.

Well fortified by thick stone walls
a-quarried from the craggy heart
of this carved earth’s basalt halls,
this house still plays its sacred harp.

For though someday the sun will rise
above this temple’s gaping ruin,
its oaken rafters open to the skies,
there will go on the formless tune

whose notes compose creation’s tale
that’s told unwritten in lettered fire.
In my lungs I breathe the words
to join someday the hidden choir.

With that, this door did not lead inside
that bastion built for worshipping.
Her song instead had opened wide
my spirit for all this life will bring.

The last rose petals fall to the ground
leaving the rosehips bare
as autumn’s chill again comes around
to strip blooms that had been fair
The rosehips have hairs all wiry and grey
that also break off, one by one
Her color is gone, she fades away
until this rose lady’s season is done
Her petals arrayed on frosty soil
decay gently in the cold rain
while in her hips, seeds are born
to bring forth new roses again

In the days when we first chipped stone
and carved from earth long lines of chalk,
we set in place rock circles honed
to hear the nature spirits talk.

The hurried sun wheeled all around
these massive stones we made to stand,
casting shadows on this fertile ground
that tell us when to sow this land.

Then came the age of bronze first wrought.
We built our temples where oracles spoke
foretelling how our world was caught
in snares and schemes of gods provoked.

But tin and copper fell to iron;
A new temple grew upon Zion’s hill,
as gods to just one god would turn —
iron presaged dark satanic mills.

Another grain in the hourglass fell:
the sharpened skill of work in steel.
Our churches rose with tales to tell
which called us to in sackcloth kneel.

We wedded iron with coke and steam
to summon power, rip from earth
all we ever craved: a false dream
of boundless bounty, endless worth.

From one old god to a new model,
religious in the cult of me,
prepackaged for our blind apostles,
Mammon’s black seed sowed eagerly.

This seed turned slick with silicon
from which grew fiberoptic veins
injected with an ****** balm:
A new cult idol it became.

Today the circle’s stones are laid
in server nets that span the globe,
with oracle influencers well paid
to infantilize our frontal lobe.

Bright magic mirrors in our hands
with retina screen technology:
Tech prophets lead to this promised land
of unkept promises to fill false needs.

The circle’s silicon steles stand:
new dark satanic mills for today.
A mock Jerusalem holy land,
bare desert where chalk lines once lay.

In this waste I find an old stone axe
of flint and oak and red deer’s thread.
Its polished head still bears the cracks
from when we first on this path were led.

Some days on back I sat on a pub’s oak stool
and drew in the musty smell of its past,
its scent of old leather and spilled beer that pooled
under the floorboards in a sticky mass.

An old man came in and pulled up a chair
and he scratched at his stubbly beard.
His grey eyes had fixed me in a granite stare
and rumbled ‘til his raspy throat cleared.

He said, “The word ‘nostalgia’ comes from Greek stems.
It means the pain of homecoming.
We look to the past through a cataract lens
at a ‘home’ that’s made out of nothing.”

I asked, “You can’t go back to your home again?”
He shook his head, a woolen wisp of a sigh.
“That home exists in the land of pretend,”
he softly exhaled in laconic reply.

And then he stood and slipped away home
while the strains of “Jerusalem” played.
I sat in my cloud of memories alone,
from fog emerged in the present to stay.

I’m in a wide deep river
that flows onwards to the sea.
The wind gusts at my back
in spite of the lee.

The bleak banks are far away,
the murky waters are swift,
my feet don’t reach the river’s bed,
I’m floating lonely and adrift.

Once every so often
I bump against a big rock
that my hands will firmly clasp
to stop the tick and the tock —

but the rock is slick
with the slime of passing time
and I slip on and on
to the sunset light sublime.

Look: All around are scattered people
failing too to stem the flow
as the tireless river hurries on
towards the sunset’s vesper glow.

Then I start to grasp
that to fight it is to fail
and I must be one with the river,
not see it as my jail.

And now, and now, and now:
As my thoughts flow consoled,
I float as one with clockwork water…
each bobbing second turns into gold.

A tattooed man, burly and grey,
twists his hemp-fiber rope.
He thinks only of this cable’s lay,
not of wistfulness or unfulfilled hope.

His skin is bronzed and deeply creased
echoing the waves of the sea.
The grey wisps of his forearms’ thin fleece
recall thousands of mornings misty.

His thick fingers grasp like old iron anchors
as his mind glides through his tasks.
He pays no heed to the long-faded cankers
on his worn body from times long past.

Silently he furls the white canvas sails
and stows the great ropes below.
He calmly swabs with a mop and a pail
all the sea salt on the deck white as snow.

The now naked oak masts still rise to blue skies
as seagulls circle and sing their own lay.
But the sailor man hears not their cries —
He turns the capstan: Anchor aweigh.

The oaken ship now glides at slow pace,
adrift on the wide open waters.
A smile takes shape under grey beard’s lace:
He seeks the hand of Poseidon’s daughter.

He’s the last of the crew on this ship of the line.
He sails to be one with the sea.
He waits in calm as the smell of the brine
signals his new bride has welcomed his plea.

Ages hence a wreck will be found
with just one skeleton aboard.
But upon one bony finger, a round
gold band shines out like a vast hoard.

The sentinel stood
on the stone parapet
under heavy storm clouds
that stained the stone wet
and as the sleet fell
he turned his collar high
and, stoic, did his rounds
with the faintest little sigh —
His simple task was this:
keep watch over the town
no matter wind or weather —
the corporal earned quiet renown

Turrets and towers and a fortified keep
all protected by barbicans of stone
encircle a heart that solitary beats
besieged by being alone
The curtain wall rises terribly high
behind a dark, wide, and deep moat
behind both hides a soul with a sigh
draped in a man-at-arms’ coat
The banners are torn and raggedly hang
far above the desolate ward
while the heart hopes for a cannonade’s bang
to free itself with a stroke of a sword
And there approaches on the sunlit plain
a fellow heart with siege engines in train

A frail man stood high on a granite precipice
as rain lashed harshly his wrinkled brow.
His dead eyes stared fixed into the abyss
while the deep clouds held an intemperate row.

The powdery embers of his belly’s red fire
had dimmed to flecks of faintest off white.
But now, not far from where this had transpired
shone out a tall lighthouse streaming bright.

And in its arc light’s blazing blue beams
the haggard man saw past his mind’s edge
to see he wasn’t the only in a feverish dream:
Multitudes stood each on a dark stony ledge.

Just then the others saw too through the gloom
that they were surrounded in this bracken dell
by bleak fellow travelers of similar doom:
They shared in their bones that they all were unwell.

This newfound chorus sang their litanies all
in crescendos of crisis and depths they bewailed
but the more that joined in, the music recalled
how by sharing their song they’d over darkness prevail.

There in the bellies of each in the throng
once cold embers began to kindle a spell:
This company of the crushed composed a new song
whose magic this sympathy symphony cast well.

A Christmas market, icy cold
where crafts are made both bright and bold.
A spinner lady fills my sight
beside her steaming *** of light.
She spins and dyes her woolen yarn —
and thinks of his spun tales and yarns
that wove her into stitches of laughs
to knit them in the cable craft.
The threads of her past joys now flow
into the yarn that she makes glow.

A-walking in a cobbled street,
I breathe the brittle winter air,
the crunch of frost beneath my feet.
The early hour’s sunbeams flare.
Arising in the ice-blue sky
three stone church towers stand and wait.
Their spires point to the most high
as morning sunlight splashes paint
across their well-worn windswept face.
These turrets of a sacred keep
stand silent witness, each stone traced
by time’s sharp fingers etching deep:
I hear each crack and crevice sing
a murmured prayer for us to stand
and listen to the brass bells ring
over sunlit frosted land.

In times long past, the builder made
a forest temple in the shade
of tall oaks, maples, locusts fair,
each carved stone an unspoken prayer.

There amongst the autumn whispertrees,
I open the old temple gate with ease
and hear the trees sing psalms of solace,
to partake in this painted place’s promise.

To tarry here with trees well dressed
is where I my newfound faith confess,
communing with colors in tailored hues
and with the sacred scent of life imbued.

A-walking through the foggy wood
I found a Roman urn
It marks what seems a noble grave
but its fate took a turn

It lacks a name or token word
to tell just who lies there
It blankly stares right back at me
without the slightest care

The puzzling urn says naught to me
I sit in somber peace
and then the answer falls in place:
it’s a grave for all deceased

For all the nameless of the past
the memorial stands here
The grandest grave that ever was
Unsung now sung I hear

In a nook of an old stone church
a cherub basks in the vesper light —
A childlike innocence for which I’ve searched
that seems to slip into the onset of night.
Fade not away, you sweet dear boy
and never lose your childlike joy —
Fight, fight
the snares of twilight

An ice floe made of gathered up snow
that fell over thousands of years:
The snow’s source water had achingly grown
from billions of sweat drops and tears

But now the floe turns and starts to flow
in rivers of thawed out heart-ice
and emotions once caged start to angrily glow —
An avalanche loosed from its vice

The glacier crashes, a tectonic shift
as mountains of blue-white burst the dam:
The inland is transformed by dramatic drift —
Who will find new order in the break of the jam

In late fall the tree embarks
on the path to winter’s slumber —
as the dimming days slip short and dark —
of leafy weight she’s unencumbered.

There in the grooves of her linden bark
the worker ants prepare for the frost
that spreads across her lichen’s mark.
One pulls leaves over, a blanket soft

to keep them warm, a leafy tent.
It shields them from harsh winter’s maw,
which bites with brittle frozen vent
and breathes through branches bare and raw.

In the underground, her roots hold fast
to living soil that’s black as night.
They mirror icy wisp-clouds that grasp
the frosted skies’ pale starry light.

At last she slips into a dream
of bursting buds and birdsonged air
which softly waft in dewdrop streams
in answer to her winter’s prayer.

The ancient oak
wears a cloak
of hoary old bark
and scalloped leaves.

She raises high her limbs,
writes silent hymns
that the nested larks
turn to music with ease.

A thousand years
on this blue sphere
has this oak thrived
under countless moons

aloof from the cares
we people may share:
She’s simply alive
to write her secret tunes.

A-walking through stone Old Town streets
of Edinburgh lashed by wind and sleet,
I saw Tron Kirk tower ***** the sky —
she loosed great raindrops on passersby:
A handsome former city church,
by fickle faithful left in the lurch,
still called down tears of Scottish rain
and wept, but dreams she’ll rise again

Lightning snaps and rain applauds
as thunder claps above horizons’ walls
Grumbling clouds march swiftly on
to booming sounds and cracks of dawn —
Here below, in the cockpit of storm,
the rain now sows blue jewels that form
on an old rose’s petals and thorny stalks
to test the mettle of the bugs that walk
up and down their rosebush world
that’s becrowned by blossoms, red unfurled:
One bug, aloof, sits calm and at peace
under his roof of a sturdy green leaf —
This one bug that I see amidst all the gloom
is who I wish to be, under red blooms

The tyrant built his tower tall,
set straight to work a-cutting through
the golden threads that join us all
to hoard them in his mental zoo.

Its bricks were baked of stolen clay
in his kleptocratic kilns’ cracked moulds.
Their stench of sulfurous yellow stays
as mockery of our cords of gold.

He covets the gleaming ties we share
to gild the cavern in his tower.
The pit that’s fed with his charm’s snares
cannot be sated with this gold of ours.

His true name is as it ever stayed,
be it Xerxes, or Julius, or Wilhelm, or Don,
this ******* hybrid of hubris and hate,
who feeds on sycophantic fawns.

But despots have their own red thread,
a truth of iron wrought long before:
Each one will end encased in lead,
entombed beneath time’s deepening ****.

The tower topples, his memory fades.
He takes his place with Hades’ shades.

An oracle stands
alone in her stone grotto —
Solitary lamp

Old and new, side by side,
always riding changing tides.
Ebb and flow, rise and fall,
topsy turvy times for all.
Old church clock strikes at noon,
a smartwatch plays a tune,
then and now we measure time —
see how our times seem to rhyme

Weathervane, weathervane,
whither does the wind blow?
Will you learn to point the way
or will you just go with the flow?
When the fox would rule the henhouse
as the wind twists all around
will the weathercock crow midnight
without making a sound?

When the changes come
will winter winds still blow?
What world will we see
as quicksilver higher flows?
When this time is past
will songbirds still be heard?
Will parents still tell children
of the bees and the birds?
Will grandchildren know about
lightning bugs in the dark?
Will lovers still know what’s meant
by butterflies in their hearts?
May those gifts that we leave
for those who come hereafter
not become the close
of this book’s final chapter.

Dear reader, let me with you share
how we must loosen winter’s snare.

I remember my last summer
when lazy clouds would puff the sky
and the river’d laugh and murmur
while the wind wandered gently by.

The trees all waved in greeting
with their maple green hand leaves
while air with nectar dripping
wafted past my senses’ eaves.

All around were people glowing,
each filled to the rim with gold sunlight,
each face a brimming chalice flowing
with the fruit of grapes of delight.

But now the sun’s departed
behind the bleak clouds’ winter coat
while leafless trees look guarded —
no more waving, just remote.

I turn my collar stiffly upwards,
wrap my scarf around my face,
become one more of masked hundreds —
of our hearts’ warming hearths no trace.

Where voices once were warm and clear,
they languish, muffled in a space
that tightens in a chilling fear
locked in the creeping frost’s embrace.

The slice of ice into my bones
snaps me awake to think again
and free myself from aches and groans
that winter’s biting shadow sends.

Under winter’s bitter blanket grey,
my mind wills back to summer’s upland hills
that shimmer in sunlit summer days
to cast off winter’s hoary chills.

And so, my friend, do we choose the dark
or do we light the solstice spark?