Passing the Buck
Poetry Corner
Contributor: David Steele   
Tuesday, 08 January 2008

A poem about the things we miss

World whitened by dust gloved fingers.
Doily branches powder laced and gleaming.
And I, curling steam stack locomotive,
One foot. Next foot. Frozen crystals shaken.
Tingling from snap-dry brown ferns.
Pixie bells for the ears only of believers.
My booming bass heart clumsy rhythm,
On that windless, cloudless, wordless day.
Your movement ceased in counterpoint to mine.
Bottomless black pools draining morning light,
As I skirted their anxious far horizon.
Out of place and troublesome.
Ancestral voices begged you to motion,
Frost peppered sinews coiled spring loaded,
Filling your thoughts with flight.
Red mist descending.
But you held. And drank your fear.
I stepped on, wooly warm and natureproof.
And, insulated, never noticed.