Shooting stars at midnight
Colonel Trotter by the pump,
Cracks a frosted puddle
With the heel of one worn slipper.
Declining softly into darkness,
The tail-fan of an owl
Spreads and gathers moonshine
As the icon of his muddle.
The spent gun’s pocket thunder
Returns in fainter echos
From the black barn’s inner hollows
And the hillside’s tangled fastness.
A pauser at the bridge-rail
Thinks he hears a whisper,
Which is only shot-fall
Hissing in the river.