I met her in the springtime by the river, under the willows.
Their limbs fell long and swayed in the breeze,
And her gold hair reached out to twine in their poison-green leaves.
Under the willows, under the blue sky, by the babble of the water,
We knew each other.
We sat many days in the sunlight and talked,
And some nights beneath the soft moon we did not speak at all.
Sometimes I looked at her pale eyes full of depth and her light hair splayed out in the grass.
Set against the greenery she looked like winter come to summer’s land.
Sometimes she looked back at me.
But as the autumn seeped in and the brook grew still and the leaves turned, her pale eyes were shamed with tears like ice.
How could she last, how could we last, in a frozen world?
And one day I found her, under the swaying willows that clinked glassy with ice,
And her gold hair was splayed out in the water, and her blue eyes were still.
I followed her, but now I don’t know how to find her.
I thought she’d be here when I went to join her, but where is she?
It is very dark, and very cold without her here.
I followed her, and now I am alone, and neither winter nor summer may reach me again.