Winter's Charm

cold cold sliver of light
your harvests have ruined us with delight
then brought us to this gold drought

now again the season of lights
strives to quench the inky chills

sharpened by memories of slate and moss
dusted by lace and delicate frost

whole thimblefulls of color
sketch the brine

quickly in the night sky
pieces of our white bodies appear

glittering from an unspoken past

the sun's gyre deepening from cosmos to bone,
as the cycles leap through hair

and are written into our hands

the dark branches
mapped by leaves matter

so does the elfin sea

we take these homeopathic doses
of cold silver

to enter the flame

ribbons bite the black and talk back

the crystal world reverses
the hum of summer amazing the dark queen in her red throne

hideous wrecks march along the bricks
dragon-haired madchens fade into dusk

keep the cold out or let it in
either way it spins
all real all illusion all real

entering now the mannequin stillness of
death's statuary we thought we knew too well

in the wild dark blue
an orange hallucination blossoms

and we run as water
sluicing into patterns

within the vast geometries
that pin us like Orion

yet open us
and let us go