The sun is a ghost that forgot how to haunt,
Leaving the sky hollow, brittle, and gaunt.
From the throat of the night, the silver frost creeps,
To silence the valley while the weary world sleeps.
Frost comes from the night, a crystalline lace,
Mapping the bones of this desolate place.
It binds the tall hemlock in shackles of glass,
And shatters like jewels in the dying dead grass.
Snow falls and touches the darkness below,
A burial shroud made of powder and glow.
It doesn't drift softly; it bites at the air,
A pale, drifting weight of a winter’s despair.
The hearth fire is small, a flickering lie,
Against the vast stretch of the coal-colored sky.
Our hearts freeze in the dark cold, stilled by the fear
That morning has vanished and will not appear.
For the moon is a blade, and the stars are but grit,
In a season where shadows and ice-storms are knit.
No mercy is found in the stillness of heights,
Under the glare of the merciless white nights.