Brighter than a fall bonfire but with the chill of ice
the Winter sun haloes the gray and barren woodland,
throbbing, almost hesitant, with a florescent pulse,
brazen in its unrelenting descent, it clings
to the horizon.
How it hurt my eyes.
Thin skinned, the lids tinge orange, the white of sol’s merging:
trunks, boughs, branches, twigs, welt the dusk
rouging the line between, blooding the virgin night.
Pricked, the brain pulses in tune unable to look away.
How it hurt my mind.
Splayed fingers block the sharpened spears of screaming fright
the Winter sun, indexed, palmed, scratches the face of I.
Within a lightless room a pall hides blue veins, near comatose,
brazen, the light, the light, I sigh, until shades and stars arrive.
How life and death both hurt