i.
Lighting shines on sweat-beads
and brows of pasted brown,
golden skin but
frozen still with atmospheric
breath of mountains. Flying,
soaring, through these
moments  - lost in the gaze of a single
second past
and bowed heads pressed
close to palms and powdered dreams
alive.

ii.
You chose to live
our lives as one – apart – and
broken things will fall
from icy fingers clinging
hard to frozen heartbeats
and forbidden voices.
Whispering in the night-time solace:
they woke me,
one by one
and injected the afterlife
into my cold, dead veins.

iii.
He told me you’d pass by again.
White lies harm not
the living.
We broke the promises we sowed
in fields forgotten, skies untold;
I suppose this isn’t the fate
of those with shoulders built under weights
of compasses and hobnail
and sharpened minds.

iv.
In cold unwinding memories
lie
the Ruth and George
of times gone by.