The plenty is a lie, isn't it,
and the snow that is beautiful and evil
like the mask of obedience I wore as a child—
it smooths the world to whitest elegy,
burying its strangeness, enshrouding it in calm.
But you do not lie.
Crooked and rough, your bare branches
weave an emptiness;
through them I can see the sky
as it burns with the muted violence of twilight,
and through them the distances
ceaselessly waiting.
The farness lives in you.
and the stars that came to my childhood window
to peer in at where I lay in darkness.
How they lingered
as if searching for something to love,
something damaged and small
that would not outlive them.
They clung to such wavery skeletons,
looking in, looking in.
Black paths, my sisters,
rivers of innocence, of dust.
Winter Trees by Laurie Sheck