Royal Fern
By the beads you sleep, laden with scrip.
How can you love me in dream,
always walking from field to field.
You sleep on, seeded by snowy drift.
In strings it bales from the crest.
And singing with it, I run, half
fearingly, out of the hot shade.
Love holds me to the mallet path.
In his youth he walked much.
Tears streamed down his unlined face,
damping his shirt. Sleep glows
in its beads, staring the wing blind.
Still the snow hums, fetching my life:
the pain to come, still the key
takes cover in the chamois case.
The key is the edge of our day.
So the fiat parks by the kerb.
We hear him switch off, he is
dreaming of the void. `in time,
soup for the father in the open green.
Now the family is rejoined. In a
gold circlet they weep of pold fears.
It is warm here, the sycamore
pales at last. His to keep. Amass.