Anniversary 4

This time it was all through autumn’s burning
our hurt and love spoke out, firing the wind
with colour and change, as branches lightly thinned
lit, to reveal hearts’ incidental learning.
O this time all my love was in the landscape,
driving through autumn, after a summer of gales,
when in new air a cold fire burns, and fails
that reckless heat, fool-blasts, that take no shape
but dissipate and shatter. Now indeed
I could say all our love was new at hand,
seeing all the wood alight with Nature’s stove . . .
in a drive through the country, my dear, in a drive through the land
the wind blew well for me, and my heart freed.
I felt a touch of something more than love.