Flames Enclosed Poem by Danny Draper

'Children spread far afield,
They only had the two,
One's in London, the other Perth,
Not sure how I knew,
It goes to the heart.
He passed five years last July
and she's in a nursing home.
Spread my influence far and wide
in those early days.
'Remember the floods and droughts,
Heat waves in ceaseless summers,
Parched and stripped of breath to bast and fibre,
Longing for winter, until it set in.
Whisper streamers strung from boughs
Kiss and caress pendulous limb and crown.
Confidante; keeper of fragile promises,
Grist, potent in it's day.
One young summers' night
Back some sixty years,
Passion's pleas of mutual desire
Explored and sated
abed the leaves, and
DL 4 AK avowed within a heart.
Flag year...
exhausted and exhilarated;
Fleeting decades
ringed a ragged crown,
Enervating storm belied resilience,
Failure to pith and fibre,
Gross year collapsed undone,
No more the bathing Sun.
Secrets dashed and dispatched
Soaked light of seasons vast,
Gift, to glow and warm a hearth.
Declaration's envisaged vow,
A longing distantly expired, or
Requited eternal symbol, obscured
'Neath faint occlusion seam,
'Message foretold a union;
Flame enclosed dream.