Croquet's ending

It is fitting
on this autumnal day
of melancholy sun and poetry
that I take up the croquet hoops.

     Once more.

For a day or two
they leave a clear impression,
seen and felt,
but they leave and weave
a longer, lingering mark.

     Once more.

I look forward now
in the hope of my old age
to at least one further summer
with its white hoops 
and coloured balls,
struck like perfect percussion
on the rich green grass
in sunlit spells of purest harmony.

     Once more.

And I look backward too –
beyond my owning years –
to more than a hundred
summer endings,
framed by these white hoops,
now taken up.

And I try to capture
these moments every year:
sometimes of satisfaction,
sometimes of sorrow.

Yet for all the pleasure – 
and the privilege –
of croquet lawns,
these sad, still moments
reverberate, each year an echo.
A soft and gentle song
of  transience.

     Singing once more.


October 15th - National Poetry Day 2015
The croquet hoops pictured and described, and which I inherited, date from around 1913