Kindalmar

Time drips like melted snow,

Brown with the death that is spring

Laboured breath haunts me

With crude spectres

Formed in the cold that comes from in me

On a clipped horizon blue

Drags his constant companion up

To battle for another day

The boat, too, is reluctant to leave

More embedded in its iced tracks

Than it need be

Muscles strain and complain

Groaning like a new diva

When asked to perform

But cracked, it learns its fate

So slides slowly, slipping

Down to the mercury fringe

Sinking further into the black deep

Even there, though, life lives long

Short in its time but full

Water boatmen weave urgently like taxis

Skimming like pixie-thrown stones

Bouncing and rippling across a taught surface

Like in a silly school science test

Eddies whirl like children’s’ spinning tops

And the sloop glides like a ghostly skater

Cutting through ice like an insult

From a well practiced mouth

The dip and pull of the long oars spins them

Twisting and tilting

Like a guilty lover

Glancing at a strangers reflection

In a bar room mirror

And all the while

To the far shores we go

Like once we went to Kindalmar

Where the grass that itched us

Was not felt

And the wind that chilled us

Was not cold

Where the wild-coloured flowers

Were pale

And the dawn song

Was not heard

Where the trees that grew tall and true

Were but saplings

And the waves that broke

Were constant

As once we were

In Kindalmar