like stars, her eyes following the path,
time moulded into its caves
the sky with its sapphire-mooned dome,
the rustling trees where the fast
wind swore and shook each crooked branch

here beyond the houses and the well-kept lawns,
the low walls and scrolled iron gates
the sounds of the night a bat’s wing,
the sagging wind gusting, smoke
peppering the sky from chimneys in a thin flame

or the jagged ice of a jaded moon
where the horses in the woodland
shook their manes, grey-eyed like
athene and her owl, untired as
a fog-spun sea, relentless and alive,

the trees and their ghosts around her
she held her breath, bare feet weaving
along the sandy track, dress flowing,
her arms covered in bracelets,
her lips, coral-pink, brushed in peppermint,

free to dream at last , eyes swallowing
the dark lines of the trees, hanging the dusk
from her eye lids, singing of the sweetness
of the night and its ragged clouds,
the raw dust of the moon.

her dreams were blue pools, the night
with its midnight leaves, her
heart longed to be free, to wander
through the trees as wild as the
horses with their stone-like manes

and sweeping metal hooves, brushed
with the inks of the sky in the shadowy
woods where everything was still but
not still, where the moonlight carved
its name in the woken tree.