Amidst the piney forest
Glazing snow-capped peaks
I seek a frigid rest
Wandering wan for weeks –
Muscles wobble weakly
Throat cracked thin for gin
I stumble headlong down a pass
Into blizzard-stricken glen.
Hark, a din
In darkened den –
There lies the Blind Elk Inn.
Warmth belies that smallish shack
Wherein lodgers feast on stew –
Bundled up in scratchy blankets
Crowded round a chimney flue
Where a stoat spins on the spit
Crusted in a blackened coat –
The balding host, he tends the bar
To beer bellies further bloat.
I pine a pint of whiskey which
Is served, with eyes all staring fast,
For I am frozen, spirit and skin:
Beard icicles, hands alabast.
“Stranger, where you hail from
In this whirling winter gale?
Don’t you know Yuletide’s the night
Favoring heralds of Hell?
They howl atop Refraction Point,
A prismic cone of ice,
Where all your dreams are crystallized
From failure’s avarice.”
I slurped the stew, a meek
“Farewell.” For that is where I seek
The answer to my darkest wake
Upon that deathly peak.
A fearful dream does call me there
From vitals’ safest haven;
Back I limp ‘midst glazed eyes
Upon that snowfall craven
Which whisks me out beyond that hole
Into a frigid gale
That melds the bite of sleet and snow
Into a pot of hail.
Why I did leave
This Christmas Eve
To be bereaved
Is –
Through flurry
I naught perceive.
My sleep had dwindled daily
From plagues of evil thoughts
That crammed their shades inside my skull
Until health and humour clots,
But they betrayed a certain remedy
In glimpse of Refraction Point.
See now you why I brave this Hell:
To dream and peace conjoint.
But that beady-eyed bartender
Bussing booze in Blind Elk Inn
Has got me scared for what haunts there,
And doubts fester within.
My courage has been but trouble
And my faith not far from foolish,
And I know, surviving night Noel,
There’s no guarantee a wish.
But ’tis too late –
Snowbank recedes
Conic lake of ice
Glassy, clear, reflective, bare
The bald head of Old Winter himself:
Refraction Point.
Ice scalds my reddened face
Palms peel back their skin
Feet rub raw in rotted wool
But these eyes –
These eyes feel new again
To see those lights on Christmas Night,
A spectrum of colors never seen,
Imbues the blizzard with Zion’s delight.
And those voices, ethereal choir,
Singing with a joy
I’ve never seen or felt on Earth
In a heartfelt, heatfelt blast
That melted gone the swirling snow
From land and sky to brain and toe
In time with an unearthly paintbrush
Dancing cross the starry canvas
Pulsing in a vocal swell
‘Till throats turn to a brassen croon
Opening celestial wide to man
No matter the gates he built inside –
All are powerless, ice but water
Under the touch of the spectres’
Hearth.
Disregarding the sleek surface –
Spirited along –
I met one of those beings shimmering
Between our world and theirs
Beneath its instrumental brethren –
Extending an arm, caressing my cheek,
Warmth traveling through tendrils
Like mist over a jagged sea
To a frozen shore pliable under
Such delicate pressure.
Midnight lifts angelic chorus
Mouths a-humming, veil of
Electric energy in the crackling
Space reverberating up
From the flat mirror of the peak.
Otherworldly hymn fades –
Ensembled joy dissipates –
But the joy of that encounter
Remains afloat around me.
But what had seized the Blind Elk Inn
In its absent reason?
Taking angels for devils, a song for a howl,
A night for some natural treason.
Wherein they felt hot fire of death
I drank sweet waters of life,
For those who only see that of the Earth
Blindly accept all its strife.
Yet, for me –
Those dreams of fear and anger
Vacated from my mind.
This Christmas tells, on lesser days,
How to live in kind:
Heavy snow that blocks our view
Turns blessing in disguise
If we seek what’s more than us
And listen to the skies.
Morning's Early Dark 