The Wreath...At the Cross Road.

Each year around this time
a faded green wreath hangs
on the yellow cross-road sign.

It's once bright ornament's
and gaily wrapped tiny presents...
have lost their luster to the
bitter cold winter winds.

Swaying with each gust, the wreath
is somehow anchored both in the
present and the past...
anchored safely in the bright,blinking
red and green light of caution.

But as all things must...
those who would have know it's purpose
have long since past from memory...

All, gone to their rest in the deep
hard-dark frozen earth...
their names forgotten, buried in the soil
they once tiled.

Soon, she that remembers still...
the sweet-golden boy of summer
with cornflower blue eyes and hair
of spun gold...

Remembers still his tender heart and
honeyed voice...
that echo's faintly in the laughing
winter trees.

Soon, soon she too will come no more
and the sad, worn little green wreath...
that has hung at the cross roads
for twenty long unforgiving years.

Twenty years lost in the early darkness
of youth mind and time...
will be but one more frozen image
tattered, worn...

And the golden boy of summer
that oh so, sweet-faced boy of summer
with eyes of cornflower blue...
will be lost forever in the darkness
that he so feared...
For none will ever come again
to hang his sad little wreath.