Auldyn Cuckoo

O harbinger of more expansive days,

Your double fluting falls upon my ears

With all the sudden magic of lost years,

Waking my soul as from a wintry haze

So that my senses spring alert; amaze

Floods through my being, washing cares and fears

Away to limbo, while the unshed tears

Well in my eyes to hear your simple phrase.

The trees are gaunt and rigid in the frost,

The ground is hard and cold beneath my foot;

Between new banks of snow the stream is lost

And all is drear and dead, a coffin’d world –

But no ! – the bonds are loosed, the flags unfurled

Of spring, and life; their trumpet is your throat.

 

Mona’s Herald     23.1.62