North Col

Each stray reminder of your home life
Is hung on the wind that pulls away from you
As the walls of the mountains in the cold light
Glow red in an echo of the flares on high
In the vault of the night

In the frost on the branches and the clotheslines
A fierce little wren is singing loud and high
While his eyes, insisting on their own life
Gave legs to the lie
That there is world and time
To grow old in its light

In the last of the embers of the twilight
The gunmetal air has come alive with birds
They burst from the clouds above the snow line
And bloom in the ashes of the old black sky
And go back to the night