Winter Love

By

Sophie Wilde

If I never see your summer face

I’ll want for nothing.

For I have found a winter love

and I am smitten.

I revel in your wild and westly winds

that push and pull me, playing rough.

And the cold kiss of you,

raining on my face and

tearing at my eyes,

I welcome.

In June your moon

is bright at five

when night, though adolescent,

is man enough to take her out.

And I go walking in that

early evening-afternoon

where everything is etched in

silence after rain.

In that stillness I can hear

your misty whispers in the hair of

nearby hills

And catch the creak of water seeping

underground.

I see you sliding drop

by silver drop

amidst the folding grasses

and linger limpid on leaf and limb

around.

How do you do that?

breezing from the rolling sea

that’s somehow warmer than the cold I walk in,

to gently brush my face

and lift my hair in

passing (as though God were passing)

to let me know you’re there.

What summer light could hint

at how you glint

in winter, when the sea is beaten

silver by a wind that’s torn the sky to

shreds, and left the clouds all

piled in clumps so weirdly

shaped, and coloured every hue

from black to white, peach grey and golden blue?

Dear Sweet you do amaze me!

Ah truly do I love

your winter wooing;

I’m not waiting for a summer song to win

my heart.

Coromandel, June 1996