Brother moons chalky,
saturnine crescent
could barely penetrate
the giant’s
match-stick forest:
its burnished copper foliage
would remain latent,
for now.

This night antagonized
                          our souls,
darker when I stared into its
vacuous depths
than when glanced
from my minds periphery.
Pervasive,
it exploited the valleys repose.
Crystal.
Morning’s volition was heralded
with a transient
thaw.

December’s waking drafts
spoke ardently
of a daughter lost:
for centuries
a solitary bloom,
sustained by unseen conduits,
grew
upon the surface
of a fallow field.

Now it lay,
                                       defiled by my hand.

Her blood-stained spray seeped
into the earths russet tunic.
Dawn’s sentries:
two soot black crows,
stalked a field’s beaded
hawthorn seam as a
                                                church knells cadence
punctuated
the airs discourse from its holy precipice;
death, death, death
sonorous
on my ear.





©*Thomas Gabriel