After Autumn

After Autumn

Snow man blows ice from the east.
Whittling bones to needles.
Hide if you can from the Russian day.
Dark dark, light, dark.

Crystals glint solar tears,
Milky blue in mood.
Crying in the shimmering stillness.
Silence where once water danced.

And forlorn fowl mourn,
Their lost liquid warm.
Black as dots on glass.
Not too thin to risk.

No surprise then that perfection is marred,
By wolf ways that crimson frost.
Leaving nothing but feathers and quacks.
To be borne by the wind for a while.

And all about spin drifts,
But nothing moves.
Save for the cackles and their crows
Picking at the whittles,
Left in the snow.



By Neil Britton,
Oct 2005.