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