Ghazal for the Winter Solstice

We approach the solstice, and daylight narrows

into an alleyway between the fortress walls of dawn and dusk.

A skin of ice granulates across the broad lake

where we swam rock to rock in a lavish season.

Those days I was as full of myself as a pomegranate

extravagantly packed with sacs of seeds and juice.

Now I wait for the blank page of snow-covered field

and the story written by turkey and fox, rabbit and deer.

Even at midday, the sun hangs just above the tree-line

and washes the lawn with thin light. Shadows come into season.

When it seemed there was little left but ice and bones,

I dreamed a river, blue-black moving water, from some unbidden source.

Wind rises in a cold breath between the lines—listen

it hisses. And it whistles through the crack beneath the door.