Solstice On Twin Mountain Road

Old friends, winter has arrived 

pale and shivering 

on our splintered gray doorstep,

brushing bits of snow from his sorrow cloak 

with red-raw, gnarled hands,

black eyes gazing inward

through frosted fields of stalks and wire,

and contrails traced through 

the piercing yawn of Christmas skies.

Let's wander these wooded labyrinths 

beyond the house's reach,

the thrum of the far-off cars reaching us

like trapped spirits lingering past our vision,

and press frozen arms around the limbs 

of the trees we find most haunting,

with their freight of abandoned

squirrel's nests in a rafter 

of brown-clustered branches.

We'll watch that somber evening blue descend 

like a sudden silence each evening, 

and mark the house-lights

through the evergreens across the meadows,

bathing the scarred earth in golden shadow.