A Collaboration

Ageless and dapper, bearded and spectacled

Just as one might hope, with Autumn hair

Tied back, carrying a venerable leather briefcase.

His equally long haired and fabulous ginger cat

Travels on his shoulder each day on the bus.

In the elegant columnular peace of his domain

The cat pads round on velvet paws, tail in the air,

Permitting tucked-away students to pay him court

Until, finally, coiling on his favourite polished shelf

His perfectly liquid Amber eyes slowly drift closed

The cavalier feather of a tail hanging over the edge.

Industrious peace settles in the alcoves and tomes.

No one doubts to whom the college library belongs

Least of all the students, the staff or the human librarian.

There is the power of The Old Ways tonight

In the clarity of the sky over threshed fields

Where silvered light pours down on stack

And on stubble; where owl and fox stalk

And flit from shadow to shadow and mice hide.

The year has safely blossomed, grown, fruited.

Bramble, fat rose hips, Rowan, heavy apples,

Have had their moments. Striped spiders

Spin webs across every corner with their silk.

Above it all; the Moon, haloed, gracious, complete.

She was ready to leave a full four weeks early

Belongings stripped down, much less savagely

Than the last time, when her treasure of hoarded cloth

And instruments of all sorts, and worst of all her dog,

Had been given away, or long-loaned. That was hard.

She had sold her cabin in the woods, her leafy sanctuary.

That Sea was very wide, the life change very great.

Her quarter century of first marriage had been strong

And kind, ended only by death. She had then applied it all

To a man who did not know what love was. She had tried.

But her big heart had learned from grief and adventure;

This was a smaller sea, a smaller set of losses, another good man.

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