All That Glitters Poem by Lizzie Lum

The first echo of you was the hard split and groan of falling timber
Before I found you there labouring lugging logs all boyish and burly
Arms strong like trees your tawny hair wilder than the forest’s foxes
Wood piled higgledy-piggledy atop the trailer to spark off the revelry
Your sprightly four-legged friend danced around her bright tennis ball
Then that shimmery day came to pass, everything warm and aglow

We built bonfires and brought bouncy hay bales from the top field
The meadow that overlooks the well-known crooked spire in town
Its full summer of yellow bundled in boxes and bound up by twine
Honeybees diligently designed sugary scaffolds inside stilted lofts
Before gins with lemon as we sat indoors squarely across old oak
Behind you the sun heaved a sigh beckoning the world to darkness
Also bidding me to make tracks but not before we lit a paper lantern
Waiting while it puffed out its flimsy chest and gasped before I let go
Watching it sail skywards, winking and twinkling up high. I wished on it.

Your burning cigarette kept us there longer still so we lingered a while
Emerald dappled trees now darker silhouettes of browns and blacks
My car’s headlamps shone cone-shaped cutting through the gloom
Then as the luminous beams rounded your driveway I thought to myself
All that glitters is not gold with treasures betwixt hay bales and honey pots

© 2013 Lizzie Lumsden All Rights Reserved