Lux Brumalis

Published in Winter – An Anthology for the Changing Seasons (Elliott & Thompson 2016)

I

I am the trumpet muted
the bow unrosined
and the fiddle unstrung.

I am oblique sunlight
pale illumination of
a world undernourished.

I am the broadcast interrupted
dead air, station leeching
anaemic, into station.

II

I am the garnet shock
of rosehip on frost
the robin’s titian flare.

I am the icebound babble
observed, not heard
under brittle silver.

I am the creeping metabolism
of the trout, wintering
deep below the current.

I am the heart-chilling scream
of the courted vixen
the crowing pheasant’s boast

the snipe’s ‘peep-peep’
defying, folding distance
across the whispering marsh.

I am the withered husk
on the naked briar
the sap retreating.

I am the fiery Saturnalia
the blacksmith spark, rising
then extinguished, spent.

I am the otherworld
beyond the black perimeter
of the sheltering blaze.

I am the chiselled gravestone
of the old year in repose
and the muttered obsequies.

I am Janus, churlish sentry
clinging to yesterday
wary of tomorrow.

II

I am the child unfathered
the page from a book
you read once, forgot

but must surely read again.