Shroud-wowed

You tossed a mantle made of frost across the earth; gilt crook and crease

Each common twig and sprig transformed into a perfect masterpiece

Each fringe and frond etched or ensconced in diamond-studded mezzotint

And we are lost in worlds unfurled with here a swirl and there a glint

You steal our breath; the seal of death is something that none can revoke   

Yet wakes in us an ache that started with the first words that you spoke

And since the dawn of time we climb the aftermath of ‘let there be’

To be wowed by a cloud, a shroud of stars, a frost-flossed tree

…a rolling sea of seasons as it woos us with its ebb and surge

Where we are drawn from dawn-to-dawn in a marriage of laud and dirge

As the carriage of dust-to-dust turns wanderlust to sacred awe

For we begin to taste the winning haste of Numbered Day’s Established Law

By the time we reckon this rhyme we’ll both we nearer than before

To the farewell that rends this shell with that which was and is no more

Where now nature still thunders with wonder’s unequivocal Sire

He tossed a mantle made of frost across the earth; gilt sprig and spire

© Janet Martin