A Song of Winter

A quiet, whispering beauty, that holds back spite to hush the soil A wrathful beauty for you know not how you disturb her. You, who must keep moving through to be warmed. But despite the pains of needles through your cheeks, they are her kisses, her love a storm that rages in soft petals and soothes with stones. This is how she loves you; How she marks the way she would embrace you if only she could move her stiff bones enough to bend the branches breaching snow and pull her blanket gently over you both. Each creak of ice a heartbeat underfoot Each frozen dew a glitter in her eye Hardening her shell over soft fresh fall like an armor too late to shelter. She binds you in her desperate care to watch you proudly bloom in spring.