Wildfire
Time is a wildfire loose in the willows
burning soft-stemmed boughs to hissing smoke.
Their weeping won't save them, or their green hearts,
nor the pleading of oxen, burnt out of their yokes.
It runs its red leg 'cross the suck of the slough
to harvest sheep's breath in its ragged pillows,
to garland the branch with burnt black buds.
Time is a wildfire loose in the willows.
Time races, time flies, time burns the bridges.
It eats church and saloon out of house and hope.
It's tongue licks the moonlight off the moon's mirror
and boils rainy hours to hissing smoke.
Time is a fire, time is a melting
that feeds on the whole and ashes the parts.
Time burns up May-brides into sere widows;
their weeping won't save them, or their green hearts.
And when black-cloud crows show to pick my bones
I'll say come, children come, and don't come slow.
Time's a quick flame, and we are its smoke.
Time was my harness; I'm soon out of its yoke.
April 2022
posted for Fireblossom
at The Sunday Muse:
Note: This poem is in the cascade form(with a few liberties,) which I felt fit in with Housman's general style, tho since it has been invented since his time, of course he never used it.
Images; Landscape Of Ruins And Fires, 1914 © Felix Valloton, manipulated Public Domain
Wheatfield With Crows, 1890. © Vincent Van Gogh manipulated, Public Domain
