Whiteout

In the stillness that the day takes on, there is the loud clap
Of her body meeting the ground, and then nothing
But the avid barking of her dog. She lies
There, small suddenly
Among the passionate litany of browns.

Her helpless stare snags the reaching sycamores
Above, the limbs drawing together
As fingers settling into prayer.
The height of day penetrates
Dusty spears, powerful for such staccato invasion.

Unseen things rustle, the filtered breeze whispers
Ghostly calls. Her shallow breath heaves free,
Her broken body trembles. Her mouth
Tastes the enamel of shock. The echo
Of the impact is incessant,

The hollow sound of bone hitting ground soft but still
Harder. Beads of tears break to fill her eyes.
The saddest, most regretful kind.
The child tries to blink away the whiteout of shock.
Death has the colour and the touch of snow.

All That Glitters

I'm going, I said.
You can't talk me out of it.
He just stared at the spirit in his glass.
I sipped from mine.

After awhile he looked at me.
The firelight danced veils across his face.
If I can't I can't, he said.

I stood in the doorway as the dawn broke across the fields.
It was a good sky and the land had the bleached, earthen bronze of summer.
The smell of silage filled the air and a cuckoo called out
from the sycamores at the roadside.
In vain I searched for a hint of something light in the soft green foliage.

This is it, I told myself.
This is the last time you'll see it like this.
I might return, I told myself,
but I knew that my eyes by then would be stranger's eyes
and I would see only the things that I could see and not the things I knew.
I would be leaving behind the ghosts,
and without me, they would no longer exist.

I wanted to be away without the pain of a scene. But when I came inside
for my packed bag, my father was there, sitting in his chair by the fire.
It was a black hole now, full of last night's spent embers.
Clear white light poured through the window and across most of the floor.

We shook hands at the gate.
The sun had cleared the horizon and found its own part of the sky.
Its touch brought the green and the brown to life.
In the distant west the Atlantic burned,
stung yellow by the bright late dawn light.
Remember boy, my father said.
All that glitters is not gold.

I know, I said, but really I didn't.
Not then.