That Winter Day

The hill sat silently that winter day

Pockets of hoof prints mixing with the snow

A meadow where in summer daisies grow.

I remember riding a horse that way

A split-rail fence, then a pasture below

Having left once again where I might stay.

Now the redwood barn shudders in the cold

Forgotten to the deadly wind outside

As if it once wept tears that long have dried

For a hope much too childish to hold

When now I only close my eyes to hide

With nobody else but myself to scold

The scent of blood a sickening kind of sweet

From the corner where a wheelbarrow sat

And something I could not stop staring at

The sightless skull, a life raised for its meat

Which had been left last summer to grow fat

Abandoned here where hope and sorrow greet.