There is the stately scent of a sacked season
a windy threat on the verge of hostility.
Crows bunch close in feathered chrysanthemums
dressing up nude trees of ice.
A dark cypress priesthood torches old temples
squares off checkerboard esplanades
where paces lemon-breath enigma.
A cat-like cedar rubs his mildew gray
against a dusky breeze.
Nature scaled down, thin,
channels a sepulchral eternity
hibernal greens dipped into all shades of ash.
Philosophy’s pale light
fosters labyrinths of fog.
Sudden, oblique, a Kunoichi rain eliminates
the mortuary smell of moss and grief.
Tear-studded lawns edit
an unfinished manuscript.
Winter lays frozen on naked oaks
in deleterious stillness
but there stirs a thrill of challenge.
Bare soils itch with entangled pairings
or rejections. A hunger.
A sudden clap and thunder above.
What now will come?