Cry of the Stars

This tree once spread its verdant wings
In sanctuary for our play,
The harbinger of youthful spring

With memories now frozen, splayed
In branches cracking to their core
Beneath a sky billowing grey

Like life, and winter, gone to war.
We wove those branches into art,
The tree that you and I adored,

But creeping ice has clutched its heart
And teaches us this eerie sound:
A child's house falling apart.

Where can the cold ruins be found?
Their shards will be my mournful throne,
And frosted leaves, my weeping crown.

My mother is a dragon,
scaly-clawed and fire-mouthed,
enormous and settled in her ancient wisdom.
Born where the earth
meets the sun face-to-face,
she has carved out caves for her children
from the forbidding cliffs of a foreign land,
and labors ferociously, day and night,
in teaching them to fly.

It is no easy task: who wants to
leave his snug home, his mother's warm
and beating heart?
And so she growls and pushes,
sends us to school one-by-one,
burns the cookies every now and then.

I am a dragon's daughter,
yet here I am, breathing ice into the early morning,
wings still new and hidden beneath
my winter coat. For now, my legs—slipping
though they are on packed sidewalk snow—will do.
What would my dragon-mother think,
to see me now, half-numb and hungry
in the harsh wind?

Remember to wear a hat, she says,
and tell your brother not to forget his scarf.
The warmth of her voice bleeds through
thin glass against my ear,

an ember to hold beneath my tongue
as I catch my frozen breath
and hold it in my fiery heart till
I am home again.

Beloved,
hold with me a
dim-lit memory:

remember snowflakes on your eyelashes, while
ice cracked under my hair,
and above us the looming sky
leaked tiny white teeth to bite our noses,

slush spattering your boots and
creeping down my collar - and we
went on and on,
too happy even to shiver.

remember a room breathing soft yellow,
which soothed the red from
our cheeks and mingled mutely
with grey in the corners.
the touch of solid wood
through dry socks,

a blanket draped
across three dangling pairs of legs,
tangling us together like
we'd never let go of our laughter;
the warm embrace
of a guitar's broad humming.

we sat, and smiled,
and sang the cold shadows
to sleep.

This is winter’s crawl.
This is the slow breathing of the sky,
the languid drifting of the snow.
This is the old tree’s creaking,
the great bear’s dreams,
the river’s frozen rest.
This is the interruption of motion
and the lullaby of cold,
a lingering pause for us to learn
of the brief ecstasy of numbness.

deep greys and blues
snake cold and bitter down
my open throat, tails scraping
where the slender starlight
cut my tongue in two.
grey-blue swirls into my lungs,
poisoning the warm fog inside
until frozen feathers barely tickle
at my heart,
which swells in the chill as if
it'd shatter my bones.

I swallowed valiantly,
silent and wide-eyed,
or perhaps it swallowed me.

dusty white creeps slowly
through my toes and soothes
like honey, though I know cold
could never thaw itself.

From Death in Winter's cages springs
a bitter twilight weeping--
and freedom once taught you to sing,
but like a dove with tar-tipped wings,
you're silent in your Sleeping,
so Death in Winter's cages brings
a bitter twilight weeping.

Purpleys and blacks
Horizontal stripe patterns
Warm for the Winter