Vestiges

How bitter this morning,  
Winter's dismay, the sky so gray.  
Seeing her face for the last time,  
All the rain flowed away.  

Across the field, he felt a presence,  
The dampened air smelled of her still.
And echoes ringing from a distance,
Lost peace midst juvenile resistance.  
 
Icicles melted one after another,  
Like a vile moon dripping forever,  
Cried the scythe of the reaper.  
 
Suddenly it turned red into the night,  
Was it a dream?  
Or a spring neverending?  
 
He will never know,  
Drifting & withering,  
Yet it never disappears,  
With it her beauty's gone.  
A skeleton has no need of dreams,  
A tribunal of ghosts, pale & forlorn.