The Snow Hangs Heavy ―

The snow hangs heavy

With snow up to my ass and a relentless bitter cold
that penetrates the snow-bound crust to the earthen marrow
This frozen moment crawls naked , coursing knee deep
through overwhelming sparseness of shivery barebones

Disheveled subterranean depths sleep like the decadence
a heart long forgotten ,  arrest in its own neglected silence

Winterlude  and a newly befallen atrophy
takes this desolate hillside to an uncommon abyss
Benumbing aloneness bespeaks in onomatopoeia ;
the only voices heard in eons are the birds  chirrups
and coyote's urgent appeal
                        for life sustaining needs

            The brumal words of apathetic pleads
                        tersely thaw the moment,...
                    murmurs unto the heavens echo, 
                     splintering the probing silence :

                      " You who are my home ―  My salvation lies in your love "

                                         The melancholy air thickens ―

                                    The fleeting birds startlingly scatter
                                  like the rising cloud of spoken breath
                 that wisps across these raw cracked and chapped lips
                                                unsettling the silence
            
                      Overwearied, alone again in a biting polar darkness
                       Sunlit hues of snowbound white on white echo off
                                  the wasted time I’m living frozen in ―


Moonset  ricochets a gut wrenching Déjà vu ,
an abhorred circle repeats as I can’t even remember
the last time I saw bare pavement ,
              nor when the dreams wearyingly stopped ―

                               The hidden reasons
        too loathe to remember  ―  too loathe to forget

I can’t even remember that last time at the end of the road ;
or was it the beginning or another circle's blurred lines 

                                   of fleeting time ?

             It's a long and twisted road I've been walking on ―
        the unfathomable map, but a wadded up paper dream

The fir boughs hang down , propped up by the wintry ground ,
      entombed by the heavy burden of gravity, snow and ice

                     My tongue  frozen to these raw unspoken words ...
             Ink pen like a chalice of ice-cold stifled heart filled with algid ink ,
                       unable to rise up as reflected light so bright echoes
                                     in blinding uncharted lumens .

                          When twilight illuminates the frigid tundra ,
                the snow hangs heavy 
      like the weight of burden’s despair.

Such primordial enchantment , a facade to the chattering teeth
    of elemental misery ;  the grasping , clasping choke hold
of single digit desolation , a contradiction of the harsh realities
  a fickle infatuation with the beauty of an affecting moment


harlon rivers ... January 15th, 2017