Winter, and All Hangs by a Thread

Black thorns amid snatching twigs form sky-torn nests, where deep red berries hang from dark bones. Autumn tracks have settled into annealed ruts, those static waves of the fridged and fallow fields. There are still small birds singing in the shredded shapes of the wind, scattered voices that rebound from ear to ear. We are huddled, yet solitary, separated by inward distances. Farms are folding shadows, gathering-in the years thin linins. Beneath the chilled earth a behemoth stir's, a beast of steam and vapor arising slowly until its face can be seen through the melting ice, but not yet.