Rhiwbina Living Issue 57

Seasonal
Poems
WINTER
AMONG THE
TREES
Among the trees
that hid us from the world,
kept our secrets,
hushed
and hidden.
The warmth has faded now.
And winter earth is wrapped in
bleak browns and blacks.
But among the trees
Our love glows.
Those kisses
That melt away
The outside reality
Will linger in our souls
Forever.
And when we are gone
There will remain our story
That lived
And breathed
Among the trees.
34
Alec Harvey
SCARLET
EMBRACE
Beneath the darkness of a winter sky,
When icy rain disturbs the pools of mud,
And roaring gales, engendered by the sea
Compel the grey and heavy clouds to rage
And veil the fading sunlight’s cheerless eye,
Behold the sad procession of the reeds,
Entombed within the river’s turgid flow!
They sigh and shiver, quiver in the wind
And whisper with convulsive restlessness
The secrets of a green and fertile past,
Of fish and sunlight through the water-weeds –
A season full of summer’s birds and rain
And light, caressing breezes from the south.
Yet now, in melancholy drab and brown,
They bow beneath the eastern wind and hail.
Beneath a bank of weeping willow trees
They sign and whisper in the winter breeze.
Anne James
Her voice sings melodies of folk
whose black wings once soared
these icy slopes,
blessing love not too forgotten
for hope that harmony
might live again.
Now, let her weep sorrow
across frown-frozen brows,
bow your heartstrings
to glide through the tears,
and call up your song
to ghost the chill breeze.
As your fingers play
the opus of their eulogy,
warm our souls
with this gifted babe,
wrapped safely in the scarlet
embrace of memory.
Colin Ward