With sun on my face, nosegays in the making
lapping dew in yarrow meadow
like a kitten drinking milk from a saucer.
Green rolling hills playing leapfrog with lambs.
A parade of circus animal clouds
seen with augering eyes through a tent of blue canvas.
How can I be expected to remember winter?
The red branched tree with snow in its fork.
Biting into strawberries,
how can I remember hard, bitter green apples?
Doing cartwheels barefoot on the lawn
how do I remember boots marching in freezing mud?
Laud, laud all the day long
how do I sigh
tasking Greensleeves with new lyrics?
We courted in a summer garden.
Pomegranates and golden apples.
Pompoms of delicious grapes, ripe for plucking.
A salad of selah. A seashore of maize.
Winter kept out of mind like a well swept floor.
But soon the sun was earlier sinking
and the red branch began to beat against my window
like hammy hands throwing fisty snowballs.
And I watched whilst every green leaf and bud
their frontline post deserted.
And the evening shadows and shades stretched more,
their black hand signing our names as nom de plume
on all the lovely poems we made up to rhyme with gold.
But even if the sun should go down
and not get up again
and all the stars disappear from the sky
we will still bask in the warmth and light
of the afterglow of a love that shined.
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