December

December

by Paraic O'Donnell

Ιt isn’t beauty that brings you here, or not quite;

traipsing up into the last of the weather

day after day, carrying the cold home like a crime.

The hush in the hills is neither kind nor unkind;

just a stark breath, the soft taint of loam

in its teeth, singing vespers of feather and bone.

At most, there is a sparing muteness, a chaffinch

welt of sun caught in a claw of ash,

a throb of ease as thought whitens to its element.

More often, the sought thing stands wary, keeps

to the cross-hatched cloister of pines,

muttering aloft unseen as your footfall disturbs

a small kill, its ravened handful of brightness

all unfletched, a scarce lacquer

of scarlet deepening on the fingernail stones.

It isn’t beauty, exactly, but something sister close, gathering

galaxies in its patient waltz, folding

the seeded wind around you, knowing you for its own.