Winter reveries

Pale lemon sickle moon hangs in the waning winter sky

Hadedas fly overhead, gliding on watercolour wings, inky black

The air brittle and chill bends under their desperate cry

Nocturnal creatures cower as the blood red sun sacrifices the night

Red stains the clouds briefly and dies.

The soft dusting of ice on the grass turns to tears of dew

Winter wraps herself in garments of pearly mist and vanishes

With the sun comes the memory of summer.

Time was when all memory was summer, delightful, new

With age winter takes hold and the ancient dust on which we tread

Echoes with the whispers of those passed on ahead

Watercolours weep across the page of life

This small part of Africa dissolving in the rain

The first small snowdrops come creeping through the soil

Colonial past tenacious in its delicacy, echoes of eras gone

Regrets paper the wall of memory; I try not to count them

Reach out and let them go – fly onto the winter wind

Calling the ghosts around corners, through the cracks

Seagulls shriek and cry, ever unhappy

The black shark banner flies in the breeze

In the icy waves menace stalks looking for succor

Patiently the surfers await another, better, day.

The sea swallows the sun, taking the last of the golden glow

Birds hasten ahead of nightfall – safely home

On the mountainside lights come on strands of a necklace

The lighthouse sends its signal like a metronome

Danger stalks the night sea, claiming at the heedless

The moon sends silver light like ice cracking across

The hiss and ebb of the sea – the winter’s night falls.