Thresholds

One last Carolina Wren jabs and hops inside a shrinking ring of pale sunlight. At the white door of a cold season the wind dresses a scarecrow with the spiny feathers of the already dead. Ice scabs pockmark a creaking earth. A green legend sinks deeper with every sunset. We walk in our pockets hands clasping at the blood-heat of secretive shadows. Boots tread through the sludge. of an ever-lowering sky. Ice pinholes vision, one eye remains veiled, the other turns like a lighthouse. Thresholds slip away unreached.