the galloping years

my mother’s voice

reciting The Highwayman

by moonlight

the gleam of a dark red love-knot,

the clatter of galloping years

~moonlight on water, 2016

poplar leaves

already freckled

with age

I pen an elegy

in elderberry ink

~Moonbathing 17, fall/winter 2017

finding I’ve shrunk

by an inch and a half . . .

yet the mountains

of my inner island

still converse with sky

~hedgerow 122, winter 2017-8