early
Immovable and homeless are the aged
soulless the sad widow
whose window onto life is badly wiped
and denies the dawning day
similarly she cuts off the second
and denies the hours and then the days
and coming years
and wastes to eternity
for she remembers
those wood where the skeletons of love do lie
all life was spring
all death is winter snows
and the pallid iris
the snowdrop regales the forest floor in small clusters
dotted round things long passed
whose roots absorb the flavour of their essence
whose souls absolved in such a treasonable flower
he of the courteous bow
he of the light wit
and ready laughter
he is gone
two hundred miles and an age
and a long long ache away
eyes whose iris black as sightless nights
but seeing all within
whose hair once fondled trellises
of smooth savour ran along a back
a smell as lush as honey ever is
whose shape unique upon this earth is
known in an instant yet forever known
explain all these away
life is full of the ready pedants and peasants of advice
whose healing flux
or six thousand saviours
as hospitable as the dens of thieves
or caves of early man
ring their bluster and interrogation
out around her face
and she passes through this simile of aggression
through the clouded sons of time
to be upon those very clouds
above their tufted peaks and rounded shoulders
with the eagles of memory
she plies its lonely vigil
and its thermal ecstasies