Winter by Clarissa Aykroyd

Winter
after Rilke

I love the light of winters gone by. They weren’t so carefree,
and we cringed at their hard, bright strength;
we breathed in the cold air of courage
to face them: they crowned us magi of the snows.
And the fire that withstood those winters
was all flame and flow, true fire.
Writing came hard. We couldn’t even feel our fingers.
But we dreamed, we hid memories in our mind palace,
tried to trap them in cages of light…
and they came close, so close, we saw them with a sharpness
not known in summer, we gave them colours out of time.
Inside, a palace painted bright as pain.
Outside, the frugal etchings of the frost.

And the trees, receding past lamplight, at work in their hearts…