Seven Years

Seven years to the day had flown
the coop of future on wings of time
seven years spent in the store
of tomorrow, used up long before
the trees had shed their russet clothes
and times dread sickle had cut the rose.

Too long, perhaps, were those years
which on the face of time etched fear.
Did things long gone usurp things possessed
for the eye of the present to judge which was best?

In seven years no thing had changed,
the sky, the sea, the fields remained
but behind the world, in that distant place
there was a seven year echo of a long lost face.