Before winter’s first frost

 

an unprecedented silence is combing the air,

and colours are forgetting themselves below

 

darkening rafts of sky, a universe-deep in stars,

reaching in between the crowded roofscapes.

 

Perhaps a milk-jug moon is flooding monochrome

ghostlight over the cupped hands of the valley,

 

laying up shadows with fuse-wire precision.

At the appointed moment, a page is calmly turned,

 

and a hush of ice heaves crystals through

the geometry of the soil, or feathers its way

 

across the windows of cars on every street,

its signature written on a contract, now honoured.

 

first published in Young Ravens Literary Review, issue 5, 2016