Salamanders in the Sky by Louise Guy

Childhood days slipped by, like beads on a string,

As we lay in silk-cool grass, and the sky,

Piled high with clouds, caressed us. Birds still sing

In those gnarled trees; the same notes float up high

Above the ruins, the melancholy sigh

Of the breeze unchanged. Other children play

In our footsteps’ echoes, glance up to spy

A cloud like a salamander, and stay

Silent, lingering in a languid summer day

As we once did. At sweet sixteen, we thought

We had outgrown childhood: now the three trees,

In tortured embrace, with bony fingers sought

To pierce the sky. Yearning stirs the breeze,

Restless like us, for what? And I seize

A passing fancy that those wrinkled boughs

Are the witches in Macbeth. No-one sees

Much in clouds these days. Time no more allows

Us to flit it away in dreams, ambition vows

To conquer vague mountains. Even as we

Laughed, scrambling – I was scared – on the aged walls,

Some thread between us unravels, drifts free,

Softly: we know but don’t say that the future calls

Each of us away. Time’s measured tread falls

Lightly in the garden: we’ve said goodbye,

But not adieu, and when middle-age palls,

We’ll slip back to the days when we could spy

Witches in trees and salamanders in the sky.