December Twenty-First

Over this plate flat
expanse, the low
slate sky in shale
layered shades shifting
above, sleet static
across the windshield
I reach slowly through
the glass into the
impossible petticoats
of a first late
storm, too late, but
here anyway.

The soft blue
this short day
feels a way through
quietly creeping
a crack in December
rock from between two layers
A yawning first eye opens,
a soft
pale gray disc
Thrown between dark
stallion clouds
which run beneath
the pegasus cirrus wisps
singing over everything.

Seeing
up
through
to that humble
desperate sun
which reaches incandescence
only now
before being
interned again
into the long
solstice
night.