surging winter

always this surge of winter hangs
perched above a swollen sky that
sighs with cold tears for leaves left to
lie prone upon fallen ground,
summer's high sky ground down to a halt
as autumn's storm buries its sword up to the hilt
in a fit of colorful rage,
and the ages turn pages upon
the lives of trees
and every being beneath their canopies,
this panoply of gray remains the constant backdrop of
rusting foliage dropping
solitary remnants of seasons past,
seasons come to pass ever faster
as the master of ceremonies grows
whiter in winter and the
hinterlands of life lay wasted today
until the sun brings renewal
to new life imbued with wisdom,
wisdom that comes in dreams of lives
unseen with waking eyes,
wisdom that comes with age
and the secrets of winter preceded by the cold north wind,
that all life lives in order to die,
in order to feed the coming and going of seasons,
in order to keep this order of summer bordering winter
buffered by ruffled feathers
blanketing the bed of land laid fallow by
shallow waters receding from the sky.

the sky cries its raindrop cadence for this
maiden ground farther down
upon fertile and sound soils unspoiled,
this dance of heaven and earth constantly
reenacting the birth of seasons,
giving reason to the rhyme of the sublime
underlying current of tides turning
burning suns into frozen moons,
a river of progression flows through each quarter turn of this globe
robed in seas and green trees
floating underground yet rooted to the sky.