I imagine the onset as falling snow.
For Derek
I imagine the onset as falling snow.
A dusting of the landscape, whiting out
parts of the garden, and later
the confusion of the blizzard, shadows in the whirling
gloom and layer on layer of cold…
…….muffling thought,
…….defeating sequence,
…….silencing the birds…
Now you lie under six feet of snow in a half-life of winter sun,
your face a smooth drift of calm.
Your love comes daily to build her fire, the careful
murmurs and patient caresses,
and sparks rise in the flickering light:
that summer island, your naked insistence,
the wild-hearted splash, her hair in the breeze.
Your daughter holds your chest, whispers of flames
and fragments, her sister of embers and dance.
The snow melts, gently, patches of green.
Flowers burst into fluttering bloom.
But the snow still falls,
and the horses shift outside, a soft call of bells.
Your sleigh awaits.
The fire will burn, the sparks still rise,
drifting skywards through a pall of flakes,
the dawn is aglow beyond the gates,
Your sleigh awaits.
.
Nick Kearney was born in Surrey, and lived for 25 years in Valencia, Spain, where he worked in in teacher training and educational management and leadership for over 20 years, with extensive involvement in the development of new learning approaches based on the use of ICT in a wide range of educational and training contexts, including secondary and university education, and vocational and continuous training, publishing a range of academic and journalistic articles in the field. He also published the children’s story collections Batiscafo en el Mar, and Batiscafo en las Nubes.
Since returning to the UK in 2014 he lives in Somerset and is currently a consultant for the European Commission and several HE institutions, and research director of the Teen Yoga Foundation. He has been writing poetry since childhood, but is largely unpublished, bar a short poem in OM Yoga Magazine.
Abegail Morley 