The Dead Season

Quickly the year left us, shaking off the Autumn to

plunge into winter. We steeled our smiles,

wrapped up our limbs, prayed for the new

year and spring. While we watched the land for miles

turn first, grey with frost, second, white

as the snow lay her blanket over field and

road. Those days were thick with smoke

from fires and the suffocating drifts of night

when we’d wake to find the world choked,

drowned, in the frozen blizzard.

 

 

Little life remained then, in those harshest weeks

when stirring beyond door and hearth meant

taking steps toward the grave. And every moment spent

outside such safety as a roof, four walls and

crackling fire could well provide

was a struggle to keep death defied.

The trees then stood their barest and

most stark, trailing falls of ice like gleaming

gems from a dead and grasping hand.

 

 

In the village all seemed silent, not a breath

nor voice then sounded in

the empty streets, or if some noise

made any din,

without, within,

the snow soon muffled everything.

Every laugh, every cry, every breath.

 

 

In the fields, nothing but white

endless white, from earth to sky

and back again, as if the world were

dressed to bride the night.

While in their joy her living tenants die.

 

 

And then it shifts,

a something changing, moving

flowing in the very air

In the dark branches

tiny bursts of bright

and greyish skies seem suddenly more fair.

The greying snow now melting in its drifts

where ere it lay so heavy, now away

and with it all the silence of its stay.

In town and fields voices raise

Ne'er so lively nor so light...

Reviews

[Emilie Barn]

Woah! With a bit of sadness, but really nice one. I like it =))