Earth’s fevered heartbeat yearns for deeper rest,
Its rhythm slowing with the falling snow;
The fields lie still, hands folded on their breast,
Resigned to sleep where only roots may go.

The frost inscribes its ancient scripture on the pane,
Its verses vanish as the warmth recedes;
A ghost hand sketches omens we can’t name
In petroglyphs that only winter reads.

Walls cradle darkness as a second skin,
Curtains recall a warmth that will not come;
The air is patient, folding silence in
As hearths dissolve to shadow, one by one.

Each barren bough becomes a sculpted grief,
Exquisite in its hunger for the light;
The wind, a pale curator of belief,
Archives the lost confessions of the night.

The body bows to winter’s measured call,
Its warmth retreating like a tide gone low;
The heart beats faint, beneath the alabaster pall,
In rhythms only patient darkness knows.

The river speaks no more—its crystal throat
Held fast, mid-sentence, by the season’s breath;
The words it carried hover as they float
Between life’s babble and the hush of death.

A single streetlamp stains the drifted snow,
Shadows withdraw behind mute glass and stone;
Footsteps fade where never children go,
Each doorway learning how to stand alone.

Far off, a solitary crow surveys the plain,
A sovereign over kingdoms bare and stark.
Its cry—half prophecy, half human pain—
Falls like a verdict through the frozen dark.

The thinning light of day grows sharp with truth,
As though the soul froze clear enough to see
That winter is the echo left by youth,
Rehearsing how the last of days shall be.

When snow withdraws from field and river’s curve,
And every buried color starts to rise,
We watch the thaw disclose how all we would preserve
Is only fable the Earth will revise.