When the light comes with a winter's morning
when even the evergreens hold their breath
and the sugar kicks wait while the children are sleeping
that light
pouring in
the stop motion thaw lowering the shadows back to the earth
into the kingdoms of the dormant borders
the line mass and colour
anchored to the earth's bare lead.
Unhiding sweet wrappers
lay unsettling to the eye
as a calf carcass of a lightning strike's dead.
Stripped bleached
between the rods of the iron roses
as a dying fresco of an old season's dare.
A flattened coke can wreath,
laid at the foot of the oak bough
in an act of remembrance to the young summer bodies
fallen
on the cool pear lawns.
Tarmac rivers along the side
confuse the swans every now and then
and the only way the memorial stone will move anymore
is when the mammoths return.
And there, on the park bench uprights nailed brass plaques
flicker to life the dead names of the loved
who found escape in this view
who sat and watched over their healing turf.
Or maybe it was the sun-bathing limbs of June.
