Fallen

*

I was woken by a whisper of snow
which defied the pearlescent sun and
the warmth of the earlier week and
touched the honeyed earth. A kiss.
But with the wetness of tears.
Poetry was read in the white light of it.
Tragic verse, blood-dipped, laced with love.
At night I slept with words I had written
on the edges of my mind and they bled
into my dreams, made them strange and
beautiful and unbearably unfamiliar.

Crows spotted white-frosted fields.
They paced stoically, as if – I think,
still wrapped in the fabric of the poem –
keeping watch over sacred goings-on
which have been hidden from me by
the sudden burst of cold. As if
some great thing has suffered an
unexpected injury and the world
was devoting all its energy
to saving it.

I searched the cottage for him, to ask him
what has happened, to explain to me
the feeling of serene dread which has
pressed upon my chest. But he was not there.
So I sat with a cup of black coffee
on the bench by the kitchen window.
The crows went on pacing, ever vigilant.
The threadbare blanket of gray
stretched across the sky
battled the sun.
I sat and I waited 
for him to return.

I waited.

I wait.

This poem originally appeared in the March 2026 edition of The Brazen Head

*(image: January: Cernay, near Rambouillet, by Léon-Germain Pelouse)