Childhood memory

Smoke from a heap of leaves burning
as darkness fell and life smouldered on
 
That night a sharp frost and the following day
awoke to a white lawn crisp under fox foot :
 
if the king is a thing so too a man and a woman
and a child and all bodies made under the sun
 
and so our lives are lived among such things
and yet all things as we know will pass
 
fame and glory and pride and wealth and position
and what remains is what we can secure

against the cold and bitter depredations of dust
the warmth stored in our hearts and in our minds
 
though those too will pass just as the smoke
rose unseen and faded into the sky and the fire died

John Lyons