Songs of Cold

Earth’s spine shivers, remembering snow;
inverted atmospheres press white
on the hollow ground.

    The glass
    is falling

    hour by hour.

Frost in the vein grows its crowded rubies
where life once ran, freezes crystalline,
hardens the heart

    and stops it,
    valve and
    chamber.

Too soon forgotten, agile summer, 

languid autumn,
wither:

    aged sinews,
    skeletal armatures,
    stiffening.

Wind-chilled light hangs the moon
at midnight over bleached hills,
shadows the corried darkness.

    Forests fill
    with hoar-frost;
    rivers run to ice.

Winter comes to the soul:
nothing moves, introspection
arrests the pulse, time transfixed,

    energy lost
    for no reason
    but the losing,

Temperature cowers in motionless mercury.

© BH, 2020

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Something seasonal. Though I fear the cold is a construct of our times, a memory. The chill is in our hearts now, bleakness recalled rather than cold in the bone. Winter is slow to arrive and, while there will be frost, it’s more of a token than the biting bitter winters of before.

Climate change. Unrelenting winter, marked the turning year, symbolised the cycles to time, of heaven and earth. Maybe this year? Unknowable, as we wallow in invented Christmas cheer, celebrate still with things and trappings to make the dream more real. We need people and miss the presence even while the advertisers tell us new phones, new cars, perfume and gourmandising will soothe our souls.

Pah! We’ve banished warmth for the duration and the cold we feel is inside.