Twilight

by Roy K Austin
(England)

How light is time when by the fire
the coal is emptied from the hold,
when in the embers of those hours
came moments, glowing in the cold !

Impervious to wind and rain,
that lash at midnight on the pane
when life is never what it seems
and Pretzel nuzzles through her dreams,
in closer contact with the game
around these residues of flame ;

through elongations of the kind
that see the clock stopped on the wall, -
much closer to the twilight mind
the realisation of it all ;

as charcoal into ash transforms
fuliginous into the air -
am I the dreamer of a dream
embodied, and reclining there,
awakened by a ticking clock,
the distance, crowing as a cock :

The bread of life comes with the dawn,
it's ancient mill still treads the way
the world goes round.