Rivers take their time
She said
So bide your time and all necessary things
Will glide along by
But what of winter
I answered
With its crazed cold floods and lack of light
Its feet dragging in the frost –
When everything is shy
Or starkly dead
As empty as our love’s abandoned bed
Blood thickens and leaf is lost?
All men that can
Must run
To stay from falling, all poems must rhyme
And so must love be fast above all things.
Fred Johnston
