Poe Sleepwalking By Winter Moonlight

the mood that passes from the opal skies

was left to him as the drear day dies-

in the sheen of his sleepwalking,

walking through the crusted leaves

unheeding-

alive! in the cresting moonlight but

not to the world- but to his dead letters,

Christmas books, the haunted chimes;

sure of his journalism and his critics

giving them this winter's eye the blade

of a smile and then no more a smile.

and is it for a little while or ages long

that there is someone on December's hills

under the reckoning purple and the Advent's sigh

gathering the vintage of odd valentines

that couldn't be sent, not right away

into those other lands where the Beloved

bides from where this
 all blows away

mary angela douglas 18 september 2014;31 december 2014