Winter Heath

When better days have ridden

Ribbons of mist under the dawn

Receding to the hollows

Where the first seeds came from

We only lose ourselves in searching

For time’s wealth backward wound

But palliate in smaller comforts

That between snow and sun are found

 

Going

Lift the heavens’ paper screens

When I turn my head

And let the bands of day presage

Roads running blue to red

Fool’s Gold

Few years taken that are not now caught

Beneath a moonsheen’ melancholy

And affrighted sunspots wherever smiles

Might be remembered

The heavens spun insensate and time

Was frittered away as light as dew

As if it too might come again

With every sunset

Yet red skies from the belfry sounded loss

And renewal came only in tales

Falling from pocket worlds

Offering escape

Hourglass

If only to slip through

This curving wall of glass

Wherein life turns and spills

Spills down the warming glass

And my wish beheld is granted

In pressing palms pressing on

Past the gleaming barrier

Made pliable and soft

–

I stand under the torrent

To breathe the passing sights

To marvel and to swift forget

How I watched from the outside

For I have gained the hourglass

Where shimmering sands fall

To bathe my feet, my hips, my neck

‘Til I do not breathe at all

Copyright Elizabeth Cook 2013

Returning

Look for him when the cicadas fade

When the seedpods come unbound

When with every breath and every rain

The fan-shaped leaves fall down

© 2012 Elizabeth Cook

In the Dark

Slanted square of silver light

Stars falling through glass night

Myriad noises, house creaking

No heartbeat but a hand ticking

Dark hush, smell of suspense

The hour is late, the quiet is tense

When all starts— broken apart

By a cuckoo in the dark.

© 2012, Elizabeth Cook

Ethereal

I am a piece of falling light

Briefly I will light your eyes

All form is gone, and yet my

Body will brightly shine

–

Heart to heart and mind to mind

Can you tell, what am I?

Falling fire on angel wings

Or whisper of a buried dream

–

Am I desire of a silent heart

A wish that haunts you from afar

Falling faster, slipping away

Going as night goes to day;

–

Going as time moves its hand

The hourglass of golden sand

In seconds I am out of sight

A flash over the plane of time

–

I am a piece of falling light

Briefly I will light your eyes

You long for me, and yet I

Am falling even as I shine.

© 2012, Elizabeth Cook

Dream of a Thousand Years

If a thousand years were to seem

Mere moments of a dreaming sleep

I, a capsule on tides of time

Might drift and see and wander wide

To explore in flights of fantasy

Imagined worlds and wild things

The adventure fresh when I awake

In this now strangely altered place

The millennia a shadow light

Across my mind and across my sight

So when the future meets my eyes

It might gather up the dreaming guise

And then in fancy I would finally be

The dreamer of a lifelong dream.

© 2012, Elizabeth Cook