Queen of Autumn Sanctuaries –
What will you do now that your sovereignty
Has been displaced by a less sweet season?
*
Your season might be over – but your work is
Still in motion – posing unanswered thoughts
In the lullaby pulse of every burrowing creature
*
You do not like to work out in the open – you weave
Your secrets into neat little parcels,
Deposited underground
For safest keeping
*
Your kingdom is the happiness of jays;
The flight paths of swans in the lunar mist;
The roaring of the fire, in its tight iron cage,
Transmuting sadness into warmth,
Well-kindled,
*
Yours is not the regality of pomp and glory –
But the whispered glory of the small and
Hidden, hibernating in its own subtle beauty –
The half-heard majesty of the evening
*
This is why you love trees: not for their grandeur,
But for the way they enhance your smallness –
For you love anything that can miniaturize your
Frame, and enfold you in the gallantry of
Kindness
*
Your palace is not turreted; but a pine cabin
In the woods. For, what need have you for a
Palace, when your kingdom dwells in a gallery
Of acorns, and the sustained tear fall of
Ice in the making?
*
II.
Sweet Queen – though I can see you in the
Dolour of every yellowed elm; the escape
Of a squirrel’s tail – though I can hear you whispering
In unfinished manuscripts, and the mirk of sea-stained
Pages – still, I thirst for more than just traces, and the mad
Melancholy of boot-crushed berries
*
Invite me into your cabin –
Take off your veil –
Let us come face to face:
*
In the twilight of your kitchen;
In that perfect womb of cottag’d silence,
We will discuss the things that only we know,
And sing sweetly all that the mists only mutter
*
And against the shadow of all that furtively flutters,
The unsaid will be louder
Than the said
*
