Thursday, November 03, 2011

Thursday Poem - Frost in the Highlands

A crunching frost last evening in the highlands,
the lambent moon high above the old trees,
the aurora borealis dancing over the hill.
A sweet embracing darkness holds the earth,
November stillness flowing like a shadow
down the trail below the oak trees at twilight.

Winter stirs among the shortening days,
whispering of cold and icy moons to come
in the rattling dry breath of the long nights.
These elderly bones move creaking through
landscapes of bare trees and rail fences,
sparkling leaves and grasses, fallen twigs.

Patterns everywhere, and not of my making,
but the Old Wild Mother's weaving, marbled
stones, hoary branches and mottled foliage,
footprints of wolf and deer along the trail,
puddles in the wooded hollows rimed with ice,
shreds of tattered birch bark blowing free.

There are ghost scents on the wind this evening
of fresh turned earth and summer fields,
there are echoes of the wild geese going south,
the old cedar fence creaking as I leaned on it
at dusk one night last year in balmy June. 
If I listen, I can hear the stream away in its gorge.
Rest now sister, it tells me in its hollow voice.
Rest you now, for all things turn in time, and we,
like the seasons, must await the time of our tuning.

kerrdelune

3 comments:

Mystic Meandering said...

Your poem and photo give me goosebumps this morning as they bring me right there... Reminding me of the fluidity of Life cycles - turning, always turning... Lovely...

Maggie MacMillan said...

Beautiful

Anonymous said...

How beautiful, the end gave me shivers.