I stir the embers by this gloomy bivouac; Scoop snowfield crystals, chill between my fingertips, That melt in moments; reach into a haversack To find my lodestone lifeless, mottled with the drips Of seeping weariness, of days disconsolate And nights unsettled. Exiled from a milder past And gone to haunt the madhouse or the wilderness, I've seen how possibilities can evanesce, Toured postcard ruins where dreams and sighs and lichen last, And wondered where the road leads whence I deviate. I tend this fire where once a star fell: lost days, true, With muddled epilogues; but where our dreams cascade, Undimmed, I'll stargaze while the heavens stay in view, Till back their orbits bring the Summer that she made.
Written some time ago for a Muse now estranged. Arguably the split octet disqualifies this from being called a sonnet, but it is clearly not far removed from the form.