A Man for All Seasons

The walls – ripe with mould...
once pink as a Spring, madder rose
in the house which once you sowed
in a field of rye, seems but moments
ago. A battery of black-backed
crows take my form, that I may gaze
through an Autumn mist of shadows,
at the shiver of corkscrew curls,
and the ripple of sinews, seeing you
scything, and sawing in the strumming,
and the humming of a summer’s dawn.

Until winter comes around again,
and I sidle back to those riddled,
ribboned hills, that reclaimed all I had,
filling me with the abyss of your absence...
And I bring you, a pocket, brimful
with blueberry orchids, sprung from the dust
of greying bones...their unkissed,
pouting lips, paling in a maelstrom
of memories, trapped in a skewered,
time-tortured dusk.