Clear skies are often coldest,
Tempests' temper seems subdued.
Sunlight skims the tiles of rooftops,
Stops.
Savours,
Admires the view.

The sky was never blue.
Obsidian haze and gunmetal days
Light the life we choose.
Blackened,
Slightly bruised.
Broken yet not dismayed.
Too long we have been walking,
Proud in our shroud of the grey.

My brother, my teacher,
My foe and my friend.
Our ghosts shall speak
Once more at the end.

I am folly, I am fury.
I am ruin and I am rage.
I am every time that you have faltered,
Every time you were afraid.
I am pestilence and I am plague.
I am every roar of faded glory,
I am every cry of shame.
I am war, I am worship,
I am hunter and I am boar.
I am every lash of slavers whip,
Every chain cast to the floor.

We were poets,
Once,
Hearts etched upon our sleeve
The lords of our intent,
Words bloomed for all to see.
Each branch of thought considered,
Chiseled,
Whittled to express.
Carving the forest in our likeness
We paved the landscape with our breath.
Woods would sway in idle days
Sunkissed glades lay bathed in gold.
Nights waylaid by dancing maids
Cheap ale and tales of old.
Fires burn, flames unfold.
Though
Embers remember
Tender clutch of the cold.
We tend to forget the bargained,
The sold.
Up rivers and creeks,
Paddles, disowned by the meek,
Cast away to distant shores.  
Glades decay,
Fade to grey.

We become poets once more.

Among the days of December  
A new member joins the fold.
Born of love and melodies
A song sung once and then retold.
Hope wrapped close in silence,
Cotten swathed defiance,
Far from the tyrants of this world.

For a moment there is peace,
Time catches breath,
Young prince lays sound asleep.
Counting the bleats of passing sheep
Your parents guard the door.
For when you wake from slumber
And satisfy your hunger,
Opened eyes shall discover,
That all this world is yours.