Fire and Ice

Ghost tracks in a dusting of snow

the calligraphy of still embodied spirits

I follow the desultory trail to the hedgerow

what ends here may begin on the other side

what ends here may metamorphose into wisps

of falling snow may incarnate as a skittish bobcat

near the once blooming bush projecting into spring

anticipating what is not yet rooted in the bitter now

The cat hides beneath branches limned in white

secure from nature’s irascible fury overcoming

winter’s chill freezing all life below ground

hounding all life above here no one moves across

the fields without carrying white wounds of demise

without the fallen ghosts of dull fire and ice

The trail picks up along the byways of my mind

its scent of predation its form of faint footprints

its unruly subservience to the lust for sustenance

I would follow it through the fallow rows

but I have no compass past the colorless trees

or to the horizon of gray and pale blue

stilled by the aching cold still arching over all

still warm to the touch from the incorrigible sun