Perpetual Gloaming

Becoming lost, losing the stars

And the beloved cardinal points

Straight lines of lych roads

Bent by the boles, dissolved by roots

Watched by the hidden, countless eyes

I drift from my measured course

My cartography rendered obsolete

From my borders of sleep

To these lowered branches of cloud

Everything I have known and loved

Has come to their bitter end

Pulled to the mists of ephemeral fear

Towered in tons of wood and moss

Words become crushed, splintered, gnawed

Here, this place of perpetual gloaming

The spirits no longer desist

No longer hide their ethereal faces

To assist, waist deep, in the stream

Pulling my sodden body to leaves

To loam, from which, my face I lift

Stripped to my form, I have no place

Heartbreak is not here, no place for despair

Cathedral trees accepting no prayer

To be lost in the wildwood

Is to be lost at sea

Claimed by the earth, in nature's lament

It's silence to be heard and obeyed now

Becoming lost, forgotten, returned to dust

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© 2021 Andrew Doughty. All Rights Reserved.

Andrew Doughty is a 43-year-old poet from Lincolnshire, UK. He takes inspiration from his convoluted relationships with nature, love and death, and his own mind. This is his third inclusion in the Crow Calls series.