Jack's Frost
The grey mists of a sleeping dawn, cosetting birds still
wrapped up warm in bed, watch a stoat emerge from
its burrow and sprint across his meadow, like a caterpillar
making humped back bridges in Concertina motion
The stoat approaches the discarded shape and sniffs it
for signs of danger, life and food. In that order. Looming
like mountains on the ground and covered in a Turin
Shroud of frost, are a child's pair of crumpled denim blue
jeans, vapoured brittle-stiff with ice crystals overnight from
the nearby stream . Which still wends it's course beneath
ice-capped plates, upon which faux steam rises up like
volcanic springs.
The shape also manifests a pair of very small dumpster boots,
made for the tough little boy of tomorrow. The set is
completed by a vibrant red jumper, a little too big for the lifeless
form it covers. This hoar, this frost of disjointed frozen dendrites,
rests calmly upon this physical testament to the now peaceful
soul that lies within. Whose lungs beneath lie dormant and past
caring, whether or not the air is fresh and cold on its failed
breath. Alibaster-marbeled skin profers one hand raised in a
Post mortem wave. And a lid's refusal to fully shut one eye,
desperate to remain in contact with a living world and deny
the truth of having passed. What the eye has really become is
a dull reflective mirror for the twitching movements of an inquisitive
proboscis. This draws the eye of a man, standing at a man's
full height, able to see across two hundred paces of a frost
bitten meadow and light upon the vivid colour of red, set against
a backdrop of rime white. Eventually, a voice from the ether
confirms the location by a frozen stream and supports the
recommendation to keep the mother away. The devastation
of a hundred heart-stopping caught breaths yet to be lived.
Before the tears can flow and the utter destruction begin
The startled stoat runs away from its own reflection. Back
to the warmth and safety of its hole, in the bank on the Stream.
And the grey mists sadly watch the final act, before its last few
screaming tendrils are burned away on the coming sun
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