Thursday Poem - Frost in the Highlands

A crunching frost last evening in the highlands,
the lambent moon high above the trees,
a sweet embracing darkness and on high,
the aurora borealis dancing over the hill,
late October stillness lying like a shadow
on the trail below the oak trees at twilight.

Winter stirs among the short days, whispering
of darkness and cold moons still to come,
the rattling dry breath of the long nights,
much like these old bones that move creaking
through the grasses, leaves and fallen twigs.

Patterns everywhere, and not of my making,
but the Old Wild Mother's weaving, marbled
stones, hoary branches and mottled leaves,
the footprints of wolf and deer along the trail,
puddles deep in the wooded hollows rimed with
ice, shreds of tattered birch bark blowing free.

There are ghost scents on the wind this
evening, of fresh turned earth and summer
fields, There are echoes of the wild geese
going south, the old rail fence creaking
as I leaned on it at dusk one night in June.

Listening, I hear the stream moving away in the gorge.
Rest now sister, it tells me in its hollow voice.
Rest you now, for all things turn in time, and we,
like the seasons, must await the time of our tuning.

Cate Kerr (me)