Holly Brightweed

Holly Brightweed and her beau
talked and wandered on the ridge
that topped her father’s strip of land
like the bulging cartilage
on a gnawed-down rib of pork.
Shaggy plants, alive and dead,
were mashed and crashed
through hollows and head,
some deep brown, sickly green,
some hardly any color at all.
Holly said it was the scene
she found the saddest all year round.
“Spring is mud” she said, “until
a green mist rises in the dale
and creeps of a morning up this hill.
Green and golden days swing by
all the glancing, dancing summer.
In early fall we chased winged creatures
turned to sunlight, you remember -
everything glowed more to gold.
Now this.” She stopped and crushed
a withered leaf. They both stood still
to hear the land. The air was hushed,
harvest over, few birds left,
insects dead. “Winter is near”
she said, “and everything waits.”
Richard thought her voice held fear.
He said, “I like the winter.” His speech
was hearty, cheerful, like the wind.
“I like the cold and snow and white.”
Holly winced as though he sinned.
“Cold is like a fire” she said,
“that slowly eats my hands and toes.
Snow is a prison to keep me locked
alone in the house and blow my nose.
And white – it’s lovely, I suppose.
Yet it makes me think of emptiness,
an empty house, an empty sky,
an empty space inside.” “I bless”
said Richard, “emptiness that kept
Holly Brightweed white of soul.
Wear white for me one day next month,
and I will fill the empty hole.”
Halfway over the ridge they stood.
Holly Brightweed looked at him,
and guessed the riddle. Down they came
against the breeze. The light was dim,
the wind picked up, the silent pair
thought of the winter that was near.
They looked at the tiny shiny moon,
and smiled, and called each other ‘dear’.

In the house where Holly and Richard live
is a yellow kitchen, a hall of brown,
a library with a scheme in blue,
a warm red parlor where folks sit down.
Also there hangs a gown of white
in the soft-hued room where they share the night.