Winter Tales


Persephone
If I could,
I would make me anew,
of flowers and snow;
Blodwedd, Snow White,
fresh and fair,
smooth and sweet-scented.
I would be your
Beautiful One
For a day,
and then be gone.
No decline, no decay,
no long slow crumple,
just a scent of flowers upon your pillow
and a memory of perfection,
crisp upon your heart.

---

Silver Knife

Poor Huntsman!
No heart for you to find,
let alone claim as a trophy.
No, Snow White remains
intact,
her virtue frozen still.
No fire can reach
beyond the permafrost
of my glacial bosom.
Crystalline and sharp,
the Snow Queen
sits alone once more.
Mirror shards and icicles
alone may penetrate,
and naught but meltwater within.
Ho then, do I bleed?
Whence pain from unremitting
numbness?
How may fire touch snow,
and leave no tear
to mark it's passage?

---

Bloodless

What I would not give
to have salt fyre
within me!
To sting and burn,
feel hurt, want,
something, anything!
But I am hollow,
living dead.
I walk, talk, smile;
yet there is no spirit within.
I cannot give a heart I have not got,
and I have no soul to take.
Do not take yours?
My dear, you need not fear.
I would not know what to do with one,
never having had one of my own.
But I should like,
how I should like!
To know, to feel,
to live.
So I clutch at straws.
I grasp for hands
yet let them go untouched.
The grave in which I lie
I dug myself.
It needs only soil
to warm my bloodless corpse as best it may.
Perhaps one day
my grave will nurture life.
Souls may spring from my decay,
watered by snow melt tears.
Meantime, I lie quiet,
and cold,
and dream of fyre.

---

Carrion crows

I peck at old scars,
dig beneath old sores for
tastes of life,
Ravens sprung from my shoulders,
My beak-claws tear
sustenance from my own
cold clay.
Reflected in sightless eyes,
Hugin and Munin busy themselves,
questing ever.
No wisdom gained in the plucking,
only a black beating of wings
and the mouth watering
stench
of life long fled,
myself, given to myself,
feathered shadows sweeping
mounded snow,
spring long past.