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
