Winter In The Blood
The harvest is lost in the fields
when you're riding the crest of the flood;
spring is forever gone south
once winter gets into your blood.
Do the spirits you send me at night,
who twitch in the day's flame of dream,
long for a life behind glass
where their grief-mirrors silently scream?
I hang up their bottles by noon
as the mist leaves the prickling wood;
how it crawls where the heart cannot come
for winter has got in its blood.
Don't haunt the dead doorway tonight.
Don't put your white worm in the bud.
Don't look through the glass like you know
that winter was born in my blood.
August 2019-January 2020
a quick singsong, for Fireblossom at
"In old southern tradition, hanging bottles from a tree is intended to catch or confuse negative spirits.."
Images: Lace and Ghosts, 1856, drawing © Victor Hugo Public Domain. Manipulated.
Bottle Tree, Author Unknown. Fair Use.
