At the lake's edge
A sudden gust:
Caught among the swirling
Skirts of faded petals -
Breeze of another summer -
The faint scent
Of his deep longing.
The children about his feet,
Hungry for the hundred tales
With which his life was leavened,
Are all his mind.
Courting
The trembling minstrelsy of his fingers,
A parliament of birds,
Prodigiously disputing the propriety
Of each fibrous knot of memory
Discarded from the crusty fabric
Of his life - till the tale's end
Scatters these fickle courtiers
To flock homage
Under the aegis of some other king.
by Alan Gilliland
