(in memoriam Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915)
Forgotten things ally themselves
with dust and spider’s lace.
Spectral posies bundled on shelves ;
clothes stripped off by spring’s embrace
like clues to tab a lover’s pace.
A pair of cavalry issue,
the buckles gone down dull ;
seams plugged with mud ;
soles worn where carpet peeks through ;
down at heel, sleeping off the lull,
no longer waiting for the thud
of a car door, honeymooners home
to passion’s disheveling time.
Time when exploratory fingers roamed
from cool shadow to spreading shine.
Forgotten, or deliberately left behind.
The cloudy wallpaper, the bees
streaming down a straight line,
honey-hunting along the breeze
from cracked pane to tapestries
stamped W.M., a late Kelmscott glue
and press design, explicitly
of the do-it-yourself school.
And the bees settle, thirsty
in the sham vines, unwoven, unspooled.
Mayday had warmed and tipped
the lovers’ pooling candlewax
to little beards and snowy tracks.
Above the lidded pond drunk bees dripped
and swerved their sugar-sweetened sacks.
***
And holly bleeds, and sun demurs.
Bare branches clump and clatter,
wind whips the frozen pond’s miniature
arctic. The large world far less sure
than little things, forgotten and pure.