The Hitching Stone
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Epilogue

Before we leave you...

IS ANYBODY THERE?
 
Is anybody there? I hear you call.
The question reaches out like fearful hands
across the silence of a darkened room.
Is anybody there? You call again.
What if your hand touched mine across the gloom?
What if your question had an answer back?
How could you live with all a word could tell?
That, you and I will never know, my love
for I can no more speak than you can hear
so I remain in darkness, you in fear. 

BUTTERFLIES
 
 
I was like a bear cub then,
not long out of the den
and they were shining butterflies
bright coloured dancing things.
They drew me on, led by my nose,
towards the scent of honey;
I shambled in, they fluttered up,
magic kaleidoscope.
They flew around my head and paws,
one gently brushed my nose
but when I tried to touch them
they slipped out of my reach.
Such graceful, fluid, shifting forms
I could not understand.
A swirling, dancing cloud of light
and I was dancing too,
a clumsy grinning clown inside
a brightly coloured dream.
A shift of cloud, the sun went in
I stood there all alone.
Just a lonely bear cub
who'd danced with butterflies. 

ABANDONED FARM
 
The windows of this house are blind;
as sightless as the ewe, dead by the door.
The dead and lonely do not feel
the sharp-clawed wind that tears the clouds to shreds.
 
As sightless as the ewe dead by the gate,
the glass restrains the hungry dark.
The sharp-clawed wind that tears the crows to shreds
these stones do not have nerves to feel.
 
The glass displays the hungry dark;
calling you in to shelter from the storm.
These bones do not have nerves to feel
such sorrow as a frozen eye can speak.
 
Calling you home to shelter from the storm,
the windows of this house are blind.
Such longing as a frozen eye can speak
the dead and lonely do not feel.

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