Cloistered

When you hear wind shuffle through leaves
you think of the old gardener, summoned
to latch the gate, the landscape within
a portico of trees, leafless
through which sunlight passes
in her white habit of fog.
The steel lock becomes that bell
which never tolls or warns the fair-haired
postulant she has died, suffering
from too much cold and watching for
a young man who never came. His lamp-flicker
a flash of wings in the distance.
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Note -- The painting is by 19th C. illustrator, Emma Florence Harrison.