Monday 5 March 2012

Frozen Charlatan


The iridescent yellow night time sky
pours flakes that cuddle and cling to the lawn.
The moon creates a reactionary
shimmer like ten thousand camera flashes

condensed to a tiny snap shot in time.

Lost in an iced world awaiting reprieve.
A chilled wind howls and grasps her brittle heart,
whipped up like autumn leaves shed from a tree
in a whirling dervish to be battered,

redelivered broken, devoid of trust.

Standing now, without a dream; the image
those flashes will save - to antique with time -
a hollow, pale, shadowed smile. Forged to fool
the world whose polite pity would slowly

erode the whole to pebbles on a beach.

Caressed, by unfeeling hands, discarded,
then washed away by a sea of salt tears;
to be made smaller, inconsequential.
Millions pass by yet they remain unseen

like the fragile heart behind the frozen smile.