This formal poem, with an abcabcc rhyme scheme, was a pleasure to write because it evokes happy memories of the glorious, icy winters encountered in the northern parts of the British Isles, so very different from the mild, but somehow less dramatic, ones here in the Channel Islands.
WILD GEESE
When we awoke the lake had turned to glass.
We ventured out into the crystal glare,
in rubber boots, through luminescent snow,
and were amazed, for nothing could surpass
the magic stillness of December air.
On glinting ice, young lovers skated slow,
their eyes, beneath their tousled hair, aglow.
Our exhaled breaths were visible; we laughed
to see those skaters gliding on the lake
as in warm summer evenings wild geese do,
austere, white-breasted, splendid sailing craft.
and, as we watched, I felt a sudden ache
as I remembered, long ago we too,
were young and fleet, before the wild geese flew.
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