Crystalline Muse

by MOURIS BASHIR

 In the solemn stillness of frosty woods
where winter’s dregs look divine,
dwellers that haunted nigh
had sought their nesty fires.

(There’s a quiet storm, where the river flows,
always – free, and the snow begins to fall.)

Bleak winds begin to moan, astray,
and now, in the light of day, frosted away
the first exploring flake of snow,
fell, resting upon my grassy brows,
to fill them, not without surprise….

With kindred flakes, a multitude
of white invaders to the woods,
whose purpose was to vanquish me
and kiss the last leaf from the tree;
To cover all that fell before,
’til Earth was just a plashy heath
in embrace with a white lace
over which my vined feet would slip
and raise muddy dregs that weep
their burthen to the soil.

And with the weakening eye of day
I still think of the leaves below,
whose silent warblings scatter
betwixt the earth and snow
withering slowly in earth’s arms.

(Their lifelessness had startled me,
for I am afraid of death
and fear the wind that tears my soul.)

As surely as the breezes tear
the leaves from every tree,
to launch them, quite unwillingly,
into the void of that which may
or may not come for them or me.

© Copyright Mouris Bashir