Song of a Sad Summer
The fires of an Australian summer © A. Harrison
Song of a Sad Summer
Another morning, and a glowing orb of orange
Rises in a sky thickened by smoke.
I no longer taste the burning air.
Summer just begun, and already my water tanks
Sound hollow. The occasional flurry of rain
Merely splatters dissolved ash across my car.
Everything carries the taste of smoke.
Yet such small things mean nothing
As others lose house and life.
Ash and burnt leaves swimming on the wind
Flutter into my hand, all the while softening
The colours of sunset into a thing of beauty, while too many
Carry scars which will unfold with the years.
from my collections Songs of a Sad Summer
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An elderly matriarch walks through walks through her kitchen garden in the Tuscan hills, carrying her sketch book. The morning mists swirls around her, but soon they will fade and it will be time for the Spring Offering.
The mist muffled the day. It lay over the light, holding captive the cold air of dawn, until under the warmth of a late morning it would become nothing but a chill memory. Spring was still a few weeks away, and for a while longer winter would hold the hills captive. The valley below her was a world of grey. A tangible, moist grey, which flowed and ebbed with the centuries. It came with its own remembrances, damp with clinging. Of journeys to places where there was no winter, of the magic of coming home. Of lying warm abed with her beloved whilst the bells called. Of being young.
In another time, in a Venetian palazzo, a lord fumes on learning a priceless statuette, of an Etruscan goddess, has been stolen. He knows her worth, but remains ignorant of both her history and the power of her beauty over others.
Waves of cold anger flooded the room, spilling into halls where servants hid in the shadows, pretending not to hear. The wrath spiralled down the marble staircase and into the spacious receiving hall, made a few twirls under the candelabra then past the imposing tapestries hanging from the walls. It pushed through the heavy wooden doors and onto the chaos of the street outside. There it searched for a horse and rider who had fled through the night and continued now by day, splattered by the foam of exhaustion.
As the mists of the morning fade, the two times and places overlap, and the goddess returns to the light of the world.
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