It is snowing in Narnia again

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For Douglas Gresham

 

Below the marble carpenter a scruffy boy knelt

his frayed jumper ragged as his mother’s breath

god grants boys like this coats only men can carry.

 

I picture the wrought iron latch moaning for him

he enters the door of his house to a priest drinking tea,

hot towels breathing from a rush dressed doctor.

 

For boys like him it is snowing in Narnia again,

I picture his mother’s fur coat covered in snow

blowing into the mink black shadowlands.

 

I think of the great creator weeping for what made him,

those three years, each one a day of beautiful rest,

grief snags the heart like a short cut through the brambles.

 

For men like him it is snowing in Narnia again,

that last year with the holy ghosts of winter breath

talking to her son of God and how he makes orphans.

 

I picture death as a lamppost flickering in Narnia.

In veins of fallen leaves her poems recite to the wind,

sun is mane and mice gnaw ropes so they can climb back to Aslan.

 

The snow is thawing in Narnia again. There are no statues.