Seven children playing in silver drifts
red cheeks glowing like ripe apple fruits
white wet mittens on stiff cold fingers 
eagerly raising new turrets and towers
alive are now ancient tales and myths 
of medieval mistresses in golden gowns
of their brave knights and valiant kings
and lonely queens with lovers like Lancelot.

Up on a hill in a quaint cottage close to Camelot
there lives an old lady dreaming in solitude
she hums a tune as she pours her magic potion
from a porcelain pot painted with pink roses
whilst gazing out through her western window
at a wondrous sight of a walled town in snow.
Oh days of joy when they are all here with her
hopes that the day when they leave is far away.

When the children are gone and she is alone
her soul returns to the usual colour of dull grey
out there she sees a landscape in black and white
not better than her soul in the winter morning’s light
but hidden in one obscure forgotten corner
stands her walker, her imaginary black stallion
her aid on future short walks in vernal weather
during her old age her last and only dear companion.
 
But fairytales tend to live on when all else is gone
one enchanted day she wakes to the sun’s ray
and high up in the budding holy rowan tree
seven joyful robins start singing the grey away.
And she smiles and rises and dresses very carefully
and goes to the corner and saddles her black friend
and off they go for a ride in the mild air of spring
to be a fair young maiden again is no impossible thing.