Fran's Windmill, or Flowering or Flouring?

My one and only piece from my fourth year of uni...and a bizarre title, deserving of explanation! A uni friend of mine once told me about an ancestral windmill her family had owned somewhere in Silesia. Meanwhile, another friend and I had grown accustomed to studying a certain kind of academic unit with vague, philosophical titles, sometimes featuring weak wordplay and usually concerned with the nature of cultural memory and identity. We used to poke good-natured fun at these titles, making up our own occasionally.

As our undergrad days started to draw to a close, I thought it would be amusing to write a poem for my friends, tying in the memory of the windmill to a self-consciously waffling narrative about friendship. But the tongue-in-cheek origins of the piece kind of backfired on me, because what eventually resulted actually sounded pretty good. It ended up providing a gentle, bittersweet tone to those last few weeks, before we went our separate ways. The title's really the only vestige of a joke left in it, I think!

I notice I used Sting's Fortress Around Your Heart once again here...and it wouldn't be the last time either. :P

FRAN'S WINDMILL, or FLOWERING OR FLOURING?

'In European allegory, to tilt at a windmill [...] is a sure sign of madness.'                                     (Sandra Forty, Symbols)

Still the pool in silence sits

Halfway across the field

Tranquillity unsealed

Thinly as the water slips.

And slowly as the seasons yield

To many a harvest dance

Captured in a second glance

There a grey image floats revealed.

Caught as in a mire of trance

It bears aloft its sails

Wavering, never fails

What led you here was no chance.

Within your mother's many tales

The message you did not heed

The image your fair eyes need

Now to face amidst the dark bales.

Arising from the pale weed

Your apprehensive gaze

Falls back on bygone days

With a dream becoming deed.

The yearly winds have sudden ways

To return you to the morn

Of memories once born

Where the breeze around the mind plays.

And realisation's dawn

Approaches, soon to break

Across the pearly lake

On companionship's bright lawn.

Decisions you are still to make

Fall back before the new past

Their armistice will not last

A fleeting step you now must take.

Nail no colours to the mast

Pause, reflect, though you swear

The time in which you care

Will ever be fading fast.

Symbolic in your passing stare

The structure stands forever

Time's wind and human weather

Majestic it withstands them there.

Defending that which never

Should be allowed to fade

Friendship's time-bound parade

Turning our dreams together.

Before you turn to leave, remember

That the pool in silence sits still

The field, memory's fortress

Think of good times never less

When at last you find the windmill.

Dedicated to final-year friends!

Thanks to: Sting for Fortress Around Your Heart and Tears For Fears for Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down).