Winterglint

Through Mist

Mist settled in so comfortably,
framed the rain-drip chandeliers
of drop-strung birches, furred
brushed reflections in a treacle river,
while no breath disturbed
their windings, bandaging,
delicate feathering over sedges
and reed beds.
                               Only mind sharpened,
feeding on a flowing stream, its ripples
humps, eddies, so constant out of grey,
to grey returning
out beyond the quiet weir
as time were a veined stone
milky where little ruts caught fading light.

Yet blank air somehow
amplified the stream's mantra:
'To the sea,' reiterated
through its mist-truncated length
either side of the tubular bridge
where children gonged gladly their sticks
to set its framework ringing
into the grey sphere,
last blows sucked to silence.

The mist's a teacher / leacher
whispers: 'Walk in a caul
'll do for a shroud,
twenty-seven-billion*
light years loud,
a hundred yards,
what silent hands might reach,
beseech
raw breath in-draw,
when you can't find it within you -

everything iconic,
struggling into meaning,
looming up in challenge,
dissolving at the edges,
passing by in tatters,
fog-swallowed.'

......................

*Twenty-seven billion - that's thirteen plus each way, front and behind, for example, etc.