To That Place of Days Gone By

Leafless copse strums gray-blue gloaming.

Past the thicket and the pond

Daylight loiters, but the roaming

Of an hour claims its frond,

And in regions far-off, foreign

Thought its trace must satisfy

As it vanishes from Being

To that place of days gone by

Moments rife with sheerest yearning

Dissolve like grace-gilded gauze

And the hour of frenzied learning

Now becomes a Thing that was

Raw-spun sequence deliquesces

On a fulcrum silver-gray

As the air in vapor kisses

Vanquishes another day

Here the garnering of morsels

That beheld and bore our boast

Falls prey, as must all things mortal

To Time’s routine Uttermost

Beggar, baron, both are sharing

In its soundless quick-fire ply

As the discourse of its bearing

Fills that place of days gone by

There it goes, this Thing once sacred

Slips into an ageless crypt

Eager to be touched and tasted

We grasped it, white finger-tipped

But to see it fade in fringes

On the low end of the sky

Dusk draws wide its ether hinges

To that place of days gone

© Janet Martin