Consolidation

Consolidation

Winter, you are not dead nor old,

you are not the almanac’s diseased remains,

the corpse of calendar’s out of date days.

In your silent, frosted spirit dwells

the sum and crown of all the seasons’ joy

and pain.

Winter soft, your darkened days

are not shrunk youths grown old and grey and failing,

but cradled in your arms they sleep

and heal.

Yours hours, sequestered twilight, yield

to velvet shadows’ soft caress

and know the gentle passion of their touch.

You are not the shroud that

suffocates my hopes,

the icy flow that floods my passion’s fire.

You are not the frost that claims my heart,

the scythe that strikes the substance of desire.

I know you now,

Winter who I saw unseeing, cruel,

was my illusion,

my own fear of what I thought I knew.

Winter, still those fears that haunt me still.

All the seasons meet in you

to know their essence in your own.

Your place within the season’s restless,

turning tide is right

and true.