From winter’s bite to summer’s blaze,
I crossed the sphere’s inverted seam,
Abandoning green for ochre’s haze.

The distant places drift and dream
Of travertines a youth once kept
In rings round embers’ wicked gleam.

And lovers’ names the shadows swept,
Their faces thinned to trembling air,
Lost lanterns memories recollect.

Old heathlands darken everywhere;
Their mosses murmur through the dust,
Faint ghosts of frost lost now to prayer.

A carnelian glow held tight in trust
Burns through the years with muted fire,
A relic smudged by time’s slow rust.

But sharper still, the half-made choir
Of tales I heard before I knew
Their edges warped by soft desire.

Stray echoes shape a world untrue,
Yet call me back with quiet claim,
A homeland stitched in fractured hue.

I walk between what held my name
And what dissolves when I draw near,
Both less and more than what I frame.

To yearn for worlds that never were,
Yet still their aspects re-appear