December
I imagine winter returning as if woken from a dream,
clambering from the iced rabbit-hole of the field,
open-mouthed. The sound it makes coming home
knee-deep in the night, its slow feet, the numb toes.
I listen for the pain in the white shins of the birches,
splinter-trees charred by cold, limbs creaking.
What is the sound of winter? Bark dropping wetly
beneath the laid-down lace of the snow.
And where does it go? To the scales of the fish
which are its sequins, to the frost-skin of the pond
where it grows itself, to the branches of the water
in which it sits, spinning its own white body.
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