First Day Of Winter Poem by Laurence de B Anderson

Factual grass wetting my knees
as I check the downland paddock edged by shifting brights.
The reactive swags of last willow leaves
is shoaling minnows over black nerves
drifting up the falling rain.
And I am cautious
For brown snakes not yet sleeping.

You may fish for the golden key,
down in creek water,
or where the high boulders race the clouds.
Your mind unscrolling its flexible past
is flying fields of wheat.
Folded the grave cloth still unused,
and that time an eagle crashed down the well.
Bones heaped on the millstone where newly-weds once
signed the ancient registry,
in the village where no-one lives anymore.

When most of us emigrated.