Escaping December 2

Autumn’s assured tones fade

as age old fears

silver your hair and knot

your frozen fingers.

Winter takes you by the hand

and leads a weary path

into December.

You mix cocoa for your invalid

who has escaped

to re-fight the conquered enemy

in foreign lands.

Leaving you to stay and fight,

to guard his home front

entrenched in sand.

Long, unfulfilled nights stretch

toward the end

accompanied but alone

through wasteful years.

You check the carriage clock,

a golden wedding present

its chime insincere.

Sharing powdered pills between

two cocoa cups,

you extinguish the light

and sound a final retreat.

Escaping December I

Miss Honey spends her Christmases abroad,

Saga jet her off to winter sun.

Convalescing from her latest face-lift

and the varicose veins that she’s had done.

She engages handsome Spanish waiters

in verbal intercourse to pass the time,

drinking in sunshine and sangria

she sings out ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

She dances away the early evenings

and hardly wears her outfits more than twice.

Mornings by the pool she spends relaxing

penning postcards from her ‘paradise’.

At home the best her sister can hope for

is a milder spell to break the freezing cold

as she warms arthritic hands on one bar,

an extravagance she barely can afford.

She wears her wardrobe of old cardigans,

tangling with a stubborn envelope.

An invitation to another funeral

she eyes the postcard from her sister, Hope.

She remembers family holidays in Spain

longs for the endless days of summer.

She looks once more at the invitation
wishing she could escape December.

Time to Remember

Guy Fawkes' Night

A night alive

with whistles and bangs,

shooting stars

and smoke that hangs

in the cold, crisp air.

The smell of cordite

and cinder toffee,

burning wood and sparks

that leap from the bonfire’s glare.

An effigy atop the pyre

comes alive as the flames

grow higher and hot timbers

crack as we celebrate

a son of York, who got caught

and lost the plot.

The end of the pier

Salt-tarnished, red-rust metal pillars

stagger beneath the weight of years

carrying century old timbers into the sea

never to return.  I walk the lonely mile

the gaps between the boards

growing ever wider.

I become liquid, seeping through

between those gaps, sliding away

from their grasp, plunging into the water

far below to mingle with the ocean swell,

to ride as Neptune's daughters
upon white horses.

Silences

Between silences

I can hear the storm

closing in, a low rumble

at distance

following a brightening of the sky.

Another silence.

Another flash

and I’m

c   o   u   n   t   i   n   g       s   e   c   o   n   d   s

to a louder crash

signifying its presence.

I can feel the tension

in our next silence.

Waiting for you to explode,

the storm upon us now,

and I am the lightning rod

to your anger filled rant,

a thunderhead of emotion

pouring out.

I may get drenched in the storm

but the silences

kill.

Depression Lifting

                                                                                                                                          copyright Paul E. Smith

A misty veil drowns the oars

that break the stillness

of morning.

The brightness

of guessed at sunlight

catches ripples

as shadows pass.

A heron silhouetted

against bright water,

cast in bronze,

is still.

As day alights

and I awake

parting the curtains of sleep

I step from dream

to dream.