Winter Comes

Winter comes, as it often does, his cold face upon my flesh, burning,

And I am made as pine forest swollen thick, my endless branches covered in frozen stillness,

Swept across the carpeted white, my dreams shiver, the darkness rising with each fallen crystal,

Caressed, I was, in the tenderness of autumn’s promise, in the savoring of summer’s waltz,

In the incandescent spotlight of springing flower fields,

Dance, as we did, two drifting leaves upon the shadow of self,

Spun, as we did, our golden orbs woven true, one onto the other,

Until the sunlight ceased, and dawn dismissed her rays,

Like dripping-orange of long ago trails of children at play,

Come swing, come hide, come find me beneath the arching limbs,

I called, even as the last glimmer of day scurried down beyond the mouth of valley,

Even as the night embraced, father moon stretching arms about the stars,

I called, lamb of the vast sky and seeded land,

We mingled then, daughter I am, wed in delight to son of the mountain quake,

We quivered there, as two arrows set out together, to claim a destination,

Fine marksman he be, who willed us so, the child of the horizon stretched and bent into your clay-flesh,

Still, even as we clung in unison, our echoes the same, our landing near, one questioned,

Still, as if by chance the widow bleeds black and the talisman finds master, one denied,

And so dark winter claws came, as happens when beauty is stung, his steps the thickest snow marked in red,

And I as captive, deserted by the richest earth himself, had no choice but to follow,

My feet, my hands, my breath, my bosom, reborn rapacious, where your light was meant to live.

~ Samantha Craft, December 2012