The Wheel

The Wheel

The summer grasses!

All that now remains

Of warriors’ dreams.

(Haiku)

Lifting her bike over a country stile

Into a sea of yellow cowslip waves

One sultry afternoon, truant from class,

They made their bed beneath a flowering hedge.

White hawthorn petals fell on ash blond hair

And strewn garments.  Smiling, she idly raised

A slender, naked foot and set the whorl

Beside them spinning like Fortuna’s wheel,

A wanton goddess playing with their lives.

‘Take me before it stops or not at all!’

The restless silence of the summer grass

Engulfed them, as the cuckoo’s deathless cry

Echoed across the valley.   Time was not,

Or so they thought, drunk with love’s fantasies.

Their joys were brief; life broke them on its wheel.

Her ashes fed young grasses on that hill.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM