Years of snow
Rains unspoken.
Do you remember
Diaphanous wings
Who knew only the mist
Through many–stranded years of snow
On the hill
Of the ringed dolmen,
The omniscient crow
Who hid high
In the sky-
Tossed towers,
In the moss-meandering forest
Of the great bear?
That was the world then,
The reality,
The flowers
Of dawn,
The eternity,
Emerald rings
Of the sycamore tree.
Gone,
Gone on the smoke over the brown hill.
Who now will bring
The buckets of songs and all the laughter,
Faint, so far
Away, yet ever near?
Where?
In the opalescent eyes
That peer
Through
Deep-green bowers,
Who
Know
Only the mist,
Only the flight
Of the dawn-winged petals,
Undaunted,
That settle
On the lake-footed land where
The goose plays still
With her snow-bright
Children,
Her flock that sings
Beneath a star
Cluster,
All the while, when
Blue-
Sailed ships
Slip
Into the shining seas of the night,
Ineffable, haunted.
© Sharon St Joan, text and photo, 2016