Equinox

The widening wedge between dark and day
Equalises in September,
A time of druidical feasts and memories.
Summer’s sunlight lingers amid the first winter frost.
Herbs from forest and hedgerow send up incense,
Plucked with shining sickle like a quarter-moon,
Governed by the night and its silver blessing.

Orion, the Hunter, and Pleiades cast their light
On the slow, mumbling procession at Stonehenge.
The hooded greybeards, responding to the omens,
Walk widdershins around the ancient astronomical temple.
Wheat whispers furtively in the fields nearby
As shadows lengthen from the stone observatory,
Reading the positions of the heavenly bodies.

Dawn steals slowly over Salisbury Plain.
Stars dim as the triumphant red orb rises
Over the sacrificial ground, blood long since dried.
An early wind blows over cold grey stones
Stirring green lichen that clings to the past
As do druids, walking here since ages gone.
A mighty monument, the circle endures.