Eulogy for a Summer

Confined to our homes we wade in liquid time.

Its brackish tides lap at our limbs and refresh our egos,

though we’ve never a

drop to drink.

We build our castles out of sand,

only to stare astounded as foreseen waves

soften, smooth and sunder

what we thought we had made.

With our doors now agape, we watch the

steady temporal ebb,

as it rejoins us with the wider ocean at large.

Our hearths lie unlit

in the now hanging damp, and urge us fraught

from our shelters.

Yet what joy was there ever to be found

from inside these sodden cells?

Where we’d burn our hands for an

ounce of human warmth:

holding paper months to a cruel night-watchman’s lantern,

just to weep as daily ashes scatter and vanish,

inconsequential and lonely

in what was only ever

the idealistic mire around us.

But now, as the days contract in the swelling cold, perhaps

even to swim briefly in wintry waters together,

we’ll make up for lost time.