as wind whispers your name.

Summer’s breaking down and a starker calling comes –

   leaves saturated with sunset before surrendering.

The tree makes its way into the garden
looms at the window, a disconsolate ghost

After the lunch he gets his folder
of Christmas games.

And now you’re half a spin of the world away,
somewhere I’ve never been, like Narnia . . .

Once there was nothing sweeter than snow

We pick up where you left off, searching still,
choosing random cards from a dealer’s deck:
twenty-one crows in a night-time tree,
deep within the dark, with all that chatter

As regular as Santa Claus, she’d call
around at Christmas, the next-door neighbour
and my Sunday school teacher, Mrs Williams.