Step Lightly

It is easy to forget under the raw force of winter,

The delicate pieces that land in the shadow of the storms.

Wind-sculpted snow, small crystals rising above the ice-

Brief, perfect images that our passage transmutes,

Strips of delicacy and shape.

By enjoying the beauty,

We seed its destruction,

But our steps create our own mark

On the shifting landscape.

We cannot return those moments we destroy.

It is an exchange to leave our own signs of passage,

To leave pieces of ourselves as payment,

As reminders.

Some forces are crafted with a breath of wind, some with a heavy tread

It’s always important to remember what we destroy in our passage.

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For more destruction, subtle or otherwise, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

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An Unbound Sky

They mark the bodies sometimes

A weathered piece of wood or a ribbon

Wildly out of place in the dense undergrowth.

It’s not the snowfall, although sometimes it is the snow-

There are more deaths when the sky is clean and clear and unobscured.

No buffer then, no protection from the absolute cold,

From the unchained, uncaring horizon.

Yet we walk those paths,

Seek those days.

How to explain the pull of

That danger, that power?

How willingly we pay the cost of

Light on our face and hearts,

Of dizzy joy beneath an unbound sky?

Sometimes all that remains is a fierce and persistent joy

Some things can only be felt rather than explained.

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For more power, unbound and bound, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

 

Reset

There is something about untrodden snow

In places where even the animals and the pine pollen

Have yet to mar the unbroken layer of white.

There are so many scars on the ground beneath-

Fallen trees and haphazard rocks,

Rotting bodies and leaves and debris.

The snow covers all the signs of struggle and time,

Allowing winter to work its alchemy on those surfaces.

An imperfect reset,

A slow polish waiting for the rain wash of spring.

Snow creates that brief moment of perfection before the disruption

I’m fond of both the perfection and the disruption.

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For more deceptive disruption, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Water Walking

I fell through the ice once.

Smaller and less cautious,

I missed the boundary between the thicker and thinner places

That separated the water from my feet.

As I heard the snap and felt the ice and my legs give,

I remember wondering why

If ice was water, I couldn’t keep walking

On the waves beneath it,

Why the only direction my feet could take in water

Was down.

I am no water walker,

Now or then,

But I learned that I was willing to brave the water

I could not walk

To see the shore behind me,

To stare at the land that would not pull me down from

The illusion that my feet could travel the surface of the waves

And not their depths.

Sometimes the most dangerous paths are the most rewarding

There is something both powerful and terrifying about standing inches above uncontrollable forces.

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For more dangerous surfaces, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.