I could feel it, tense, waiting, pacing, could feel

What lingered just ahead of us, sky bleeding out

What little sunlight there was, staunching the flow

With a thick gauze of soiled gray clouds infected

With freezing rain that had yet to begin seeping

Through, but I could feel the pain of that wound.

Nerves fine-tuned as the hour hand crept its way

Along towards four, I thought how remarkable

To have a clock that could tell time and not say

A word, cursed myself a madman as I went to

My front door, looked outside and up past the

Rooftops at whatever disease festered there.

Eerie it was, to feel such clarity in the gloaming

Of that day, each hair on my arm I could have

Identified by thought alone, like counting chalk

Marks in a prison cell, fractured lines in a pane

Of broken glass, or the face of one well loved

Who has traveled far away from me.

As I stood looking at that strange charcoal sky

A wind began to blow through the skeletal trees

That lined my street; long dead sentinels they

Seemed to me, their loyalty forgotten by a king

Whose will had broken behind closed doors, his

Final edicts never heard in the closing of his life.

And as I thought of this, the wound broke open

Above me with a hissing cry that rose up to meet

The sighing wind with a kind of eager malice, an

Insane chorus of opposing forces clashing together

With no chance of compromise, a wailing madness

Void of all logic as the infection started to spread.

Liquid diamonds, quicksilver rain, it came to

Earth with no regard except its own, bathing

All it touched in crystal white amber, relentless

And beautiful, weaving some ancient spell of

Fairytale proportions, once upon a time in the

Long ago when of never never before.

On and on it went, long after I’d retreated from

My door to seek shelter in the confines of my

Study where my desk lamp flickered like a firefly

In the night, for night it was and that spell, cast by

The hand of Winter, weighed heavily in the darkness

Outside, making a mockery the science of electricity.

Shadows danced by candlelight when my firefly

Died and everything changed once more as I

Sat watching that tiny flame, oddly comforted by

Its glow even as a gunshot crack rang out somewhere

When another transformer blew, or perhaps it

Was a tree I heard, crashing to the frozen ground.

Peeking through my blinds like a hunted thing

I saw an ice sculpture world like no other, a

Delicate balance of wonder and destruction I

Have not the ability to describe in simple words

And metaphors, my mortality defined by the very

Existence of my human limitations.

Sirens cried from distant places, everywhere tree

Limbs lay incased in glass shrouds, wrapped

Here and there in power lines like fallen ents

That had been smote down by electric eels, some

Still thrashing about, others cold, dead, stuck to

The ground by the eyes of January.

A snow globe universe shaken up and tossed carelessly aside.

END

“A Dream Carved From Ice”