Peter Skeet

For music tracks go to :- soundcloud.com   then search P.J.Skeet

Time

Time seals the words on our lips,
all our promises kept or broken;
time, tames the pride of our mind,
rusts all wheels that we set in motion;

it freezes the famous actors in mid-line,
the audience in mid-applause;
a rocking-horse sea of flame
peels the gilding from our floating memories -
just empty picture frames,

blowing back from future deserts,
bearing grit which once was a mountain,
fingering the leaves of our days,
combing our hair with its silver.

Where now the horse?
Where now the bright rider?
Dust in a shaft of sun,
dancing to the blackbird's notes
in the springtime.

Time, just a rune on a stone,
cut by an unknown soldier,
time, a fading diary
left to mould when the auction's over.

Costumes and accents change, but deep within
as the centuries slowly unfold,
the rooms of our hearts are yet
brimming with all the songs we ever were,
our hopes and fears unchanged,

calling out from time unceasing:
'Peace within, a place of reflection,
distilling the juice of our days,
to sip from the spirit of a silence.

Where now the horse?
Where now the bright rider?
Dust in a shaft of sun,
dancing to the blackbird's notes
in the springtime...

(Written circa 1983, as a song for an interlude in a school presentation of the history of this town.)

Gifts and Shards 1, Gifts and Shards 2,  Under the Wings, Crunchy Fluff  and Presents in parallel, Winter Trails, February and Beyond, (Beyond begun then), Bare Shouldered, Walls Fall, Free, Keep the Home Fires Burning, Foible Fables, Hurry Slowly, Greenclad, Compass, Wintering, Clarion, Abacus, Winterglint, The Singing Season, Vessels, A Fiercer Light, Sketches, Bridging, Rag and Bone Shop, Tiles From the Walls of Time, Scales from Ouroboros. High Summer and Decline, Etudes and Distractions.