Ultima Thule.

Wilson, Ryan

sonetto caudato The winter doesn't want her pale perfection Broken. Her ice-fields shine with candied frost. The milky pond will harbor no reflection Of what the earth's determined must be lost, And snow-white birches stand like patient brides Within a blizzard quiet as a dream, And wait to be kissed, or not, as she decides. A white fog hangs above a lifeless stream. Snow flurries lift and settle back, like doves, While, given to her crystalline safekeeping, Skeletal elms bow deeply in their groves. Life holds the ghostly posture of the sleeping, And the land grows silent, hushed by a snapping wind Sweet as the peace we're promised in the end. But underneath the snows That would erase a man's footstep, or his trail Of blood, with the worm, the maggot, and the snail Something horrible grows, Something moving through the land, and flooding Buried things, like light, like sugar, budding In the raucous calls of the crows, Enchanted with the music wolves make of The hunt, a darkness, rising, merciless as love.