It is deafening silence
Beneath the lanky pine shrouded of darkness
And the bed of needles soft under hand,
Snow sits shallow and dulled behind a curtain,
The hushed breath of a boy out of hand,
And the bark rough against back,
And the stick of sap against the palm, and the screech
Of tires far afield, and the breakneck cold
Cries with hidden desires of dark shadows breach
In the low mountains of housed hills where silence holds.
Once when warmth was in the heart
Among the walls solid evergreen held,
As the food hot and the flames low, a boy unfolded
The truth of heart that smoldered in anguished meld,
Rushed and tumbled forced out upon the wold
Of snow. And alone then
In the darkening cold, run by the streets light
And the pavements white with turned ash and the men
Roosting asleep while the barking dog grew trite
Whom echoed among the covered grounds and then
Stumbled on with anxious limb,
Thus feet sting, the glacial frost bitterly bites,
The hooped ring luminescent and hung, the lanky pine
Comforting in its shelter bare of lights,
And there to rest and rebuild new spine.
“He knelt, he wept, he prayed,”
By the hurt of his heart feeble in the dense dark night
And huddled bellow the knotting pine though in the homes,
In the past warmth, in the slow light,
At the loves gracious hold, he wished to roam.
“He knelt” in spindled branches,
“He wept” being cast out, “he prayed” to the hidden gods
That he be found rescued restored to right
Darkness pushed aside by the cars beam and the boy at odds
And the shimmering diamond studded earth and the black white
Into that light of promise
He wished to go but he sits eyes closed to darkness
With out the car which passed and broken he stands.
His heart wrenched breaking him choked by the collar
And up the way whence came to the shattered lands
It is deafening silence,
Reentering in the house torn, in the whirl-
Wind of heated battle, into his room
He crawls, in the slow light of the dreams world.
And he rises with new light arching through the sky.