Grudzień

The tall, even pines
   with sand at their feet
      brood black between their trunks.

 The winter-dried reeds
   frozen solid in the iced-over marsh
      rustle in the western wind
 
that blows from the red,
   red disk of the solstice sun
      solemnly sliding down the midwinter sky,
  
hardly illuminating the winter-plowed field
   where the good black peat bog earth
      the steel plows had cut and turned
 
has frozen solid like a sea in the midst of a storm,
   the peak of each earth wave touched with sun-blood,
      each dell breeding black shadows,

breeding night. Night seeping from the tall pines.
   Night rising from the peat field,
      the sun spilling out into the frozen bog,
  
spilling and sinking
   into the crackling ice.

First published in Residual Heat under my pseudonym Aga Black.