Lament

First published in Fences We Build, 1999.

At first glance everything is dead:
Storm-swept trees are barren,
Ruins of their summer splendor –
With black plastic ravens perched
Waiting for a carrion feast.

The shadow church is a ruin.
Nature has taken its roof,
One wall fractured
And the new chapel, already ancient
Is showing the strain of standing tall.

Even daffodils, harbingers of spring,
Lie amputated stem and stump,
Shoulders slumped against your headstone,
Skeletons of a beautiful bloom
On a mortuary slab.

And yews sway mournful, twisted by wind
Guards shrouded in evergreen,
Two of them, grasping for the moon,
Waving a familiar goodbye,
The moor cloaked in lamentation.