Shades of Love

Change of Season

Time was different when we walked together

over the springing ground, grass shiny as green glass,

streams reflecting sunlight glancing from a clean sky,

running the hill slope, a momentum we couldn’t stop,

startling a hare that leapt high, bounding back to his form,

setting a flutter a flurry of rooks from the tall tree branches,

we falling together in a heap in a moss covered hollow,

making love till the dusk cooled us, a fine soft mist

falling over our naked bodies.

Different now, walking alone, the season changed,

feet stumbling, tripping, twisting on stones,

the grass dry, scratching rough at my ankles,

the streams now muddied, rutted, making traps

for unwary strides, the sky no longer clean,

overcast with a hanging weight of pallid cloud,

I don’t run the hill slope to the mossy hollow,

there is no hare on the meadow, birds are silent,

nothing to do but turn back, you are long gone.

I cannot walk this place alone.