Saying it with Pearls

In the first flush of dawn she pads
across the veranda...bare feet, blue
with cold; a peignoir of mist, threads
its way between the branches of a birch –
black etched against a daffodil sky.

A lone, snakes-head fritillaria shudders
in a cruel, north-easterly wind
as sunlight hits the roof
of a lichen encrusted greenhouse;

it wasn’t always that way – not
when he was around, as ghosts of the past
dog her – one step behind, reflected
in its misted, half-blinded eyes.

How she hated November; ripped
its pages from her diary and the calendar
that hangs on the kitchen door.

Her nightgown flaps around her legs –
a no-hope bird with a broken wing
eager to take flight.

Deep inside her, something burns –
a searing, white heat, as does the frost –
prowls the hillside; breathing its kiss of death
on the rose dared still to be in bloom.

Clutches at her throat. Falls
to the ground, a broken string of pearls
he gave her the morning he left...and
pearls always did become her so.