The road is swallowed in shadows.
Shadows are like
Gnawed bones in the dark,
Wolves of coming winter
Hewn from the silent monsters in men.
When the road wends up
Into ice-fanged mountains
Venomous winter
Crawls in the sheer screes.
Here it is colder than
The graves of all lands.
Blizzards have blasted tumbled stones
Into terrible heads
Leaving them to guard the pass,
Ailing faces staring from the snow.
Only on the lower slopes
The years lie thicker than silence.
As the road twists down into wind-writhen firs
Licked with mist
So the mind follows. Marching a hazy trail
That winds off into ochre lowlands
At the edge of vision.
Shaping long plangent phrases
Resounding with old memories.
The piano's sostenuto is
A towering country of sound
Then solo
The cello tells intimate tales.
The roots of the world stir
When all the players reach crescendo.
Like a bonfire of burning creation.
Softly spoken
Spellbound below the stave,
The viola is working witchcraft.
Sharp as the taste of love
Are the strings of the violin
As they fade into ineffable silence.