Behold the gentle, brown-eyed child
two blonde sisters, widened smiles
Along the ridge they often sped
a rider, wood nymphs close behind
capes, like wingèd insects, flying
and the damp earth rumbled with their canters
and the trees caught up their far-flung laughter
till all their childlike chattering calls
had echoed far beyond us all
Where are the arms full of harvested leaves?
Where now the hands that curled, careful and soft
on spiders and conkers, kittens and cake?
Fading fast those painted faces, sticky mouths
all gapped and grinning
Tear-streaked when the ice-creams melted
when the snowmen seeped away
Oh where are they that went before?
Their days have gone down to the laundering sea
and left all at once on the urging of tides
They have passed through the mists of memory
like smoke from doused candles, ghosts in a wall,
Oh who shall gather them up again?
That gentle, brown-eyed boy of mine
two blonde-haired daughters; three of a kind
For my MTB prompt “Ubi Sunt and that Where, oh where“ we are writing with this classical motif of lament from the Latin phrase ‘Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt‘ (where are those who were before us)? It is a style imbued with nostalgia associated with Middle English epics, Norse sagas, Romantics which reference mortality and transience.
PoetryPix 