Castles in Spain

How like a ruin overgrown

with flowers that hide the rents of time

stands now the past that I have known,

Castles in Spain, not built of stone

but of white summer cloud, and blown

into this little mist of rhyme.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Unaware that winter’s morning

would be the last one they would share,

he’d brushed her hair; aflame –

like a Granada sunset...

watched her walk toward the door,

steadying herself on the bed and table

as she went.  For a timeless moment

she’d stood there...

frail, fragile...as if a breath of wind

might waft her away.  Outside the window

winter jasmine clambered, in all its whiteness

to be seen amongst the darkling scrim. 

Later that day, she’d asked for her bed

to be turned to face the garden,

as her spirit, parched of light, sought

its solace, gathering the darkness,

like wine, in a bowl to sup.

Sated, out of that room it soared...way above

the ridge with its shawl of pines, and flock

of errant sheep; her eyes morphing, through blue,

through silver-grey, like a frozen lake 

and as winter melted into spring, even higher

than the clouds it rose, warming a shoal

of dormant fish, back to life.

Unaware, that winter’s morning

would be the last one they would share,

he’d brushed her hair; aflame –

like a Granada sunrise...