The Shivering

1

The past is an old house
of groaning timbers,
full of bumps and whispers
that disturb our sleep.

The darkness shivers
like a wet dog
tossing constellations
from a firmament of fur.

Dawn's light unwraps
the sycamore, pulls back
the shadows, tissue-thin,
beginning at

the top-most leaf, continuing
down to the bole
of hearts and arrows
carved in innocence.

An image of God's bounty:
the tree in leaded panes,
reflected, faceted,
fragmented, whole

as images we keep
of winter chimney smoke,
the raw material
for ghosts we make

more easily than daisy
chains on warmer days.
(Our spirit beasts
roam everywhere.)

At dusk the tree
rolls out its shadow,
stretches it
down Longman Hill,

then loses it
in tints and textures
of a woodland canopy,
like water finding sand.

2

The deep past is a ruined house.
Bones lie beneath,
for which we scratch and paw
to flesh our images.

Beyond recovery,
the buried sycamore
can throw no darkness,
but must keep it hidden,

must clasp it to itself,
become the darkness
that we penetrate
at our great peril.

The smoke has gone; the ghosts
have taken a more solid state;
the sycamore bestows
obscurity. The ruins

whisper; groans and bumps
become the sucks and squelches
of the bog, the squeamishness
and shivering of faith.

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Here's hoping you all had a good Easter. I did, which is why I am a couple of days behind with my visiting and now have to begin the task of catching up.

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