by Abigail Sanford

HORIZONS

Can it bo only chance that when you camo Our weary weather lifted, and the sky Turned crystalline, with lucent golden air Giving us hills again enamel-clear

Gainst the blue in smooth wine-shadowed waves Aglow with amber light and evergreen?

Or that

beyond the dimmest hope of seeing On all save one charmed day or two in a year – We should have caught a far peak's misty line, And from the gleaming reach beyond the rim Poured warm and vivid, soft and fresh, a wind That was the very tingling stuff of life? I cannot tell. I only know you came.

TO ONE DEPARTING

Watching as ever your beloved face

Here at my side, it is not you I see,

But that frail ghost who will be left to me

When presently another has your place.

Oh, I have known long since what aching space

My heart will hold when grey futility

momory aflame

And all the empty mock of being free Slowly the bitterswoot of love replace... But now I know that sometimes unaware I shall look up, and At an old tune, or syllables of your namo See in that other's stoad a shadow thore Your deathless grace that was so dear a pain And win the sharp ocstasy of tears again.