Forgotten Ground Regained
Empty
Outside an owl calls to the empty sky,As October prises him openAnd drains each day into darkness.He waits for these words at his window,And lamplight falls on the linked lettersPlaced to no purpose on an open page.Their land lies open also, exposedIn all its folds and fields to frost,They feel its fingers write in the furrows.Soon they will sleep, not side by side,But each with another, each turned away,Letting the letters unlock, that linked them.They lie, like these letters, like the land around them,Under a dark sky, open and empty.
Copyright © Malcolm Guite, 2019. Reprinted with permision from After Prayer: New Sonnets and Other Poems.
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