Invernal White

Icy shapes were happy houses

for silhouettes of living seeds

golden nuggets a poor man dowses

but mistrals spoilt with cruel deeds.

Clouds turn, watching the cover girl

necks crack around a playful twirl

Chione flaunts her nacreous frock

runway held hostage by misty airlock.

Keepers of north winds in their curls

Kalaïs and Zetes using twin spurs

trigger the sky vault hailstones to bawl

promptly, heeding their father's call.

Glassblower makes shapes

realistic ice statues

via atomic freeze dry quakes

appointed consanguineous.

Craftsperson's frozen breath

old as time and space

earth enwreathed with death

moisture reforms to icy glaze.

Canny veteran shrouded in fog

frown lines amid cirrus brows

pinches frostbitten mortal jowls

crystals forming on the weather frog.

Wispy white locks in cyan scope

wise head doing a hair flip

creation turns into a snow globe

establishing old premiership.

Tiny bits keep falling

his geometric dandruff

shivers start crawling

down the spine, cut gruff.

They go by snowflakes

frenetic dance freezing lakes

ballerinas in white tutus

fractal curves entice incubus.

Glissade and assemblé

stretch and straighten in plié

sleekly so in extempore

rage blizzards of penury.

Tiptoeing on chilly ether

glissade, assemblé and plié

choreography by a bolshoi-maître

glissade, jeté, pas de bourrée.

Boreas spectates atop his throne

subzero temperatures' ballet

nature caught up in this cyclone

her pulse stops by fifth plié.

Cold-hearted Father Frost

gives a standing ovation

for the curtain call of holocaust

echoes create avalanche occasion.

The winged brothers' second act

mummified hills lain ice-capped

survivors' coup de grâce

belated hail pelting en masse.

Kindly, rain of icicle arrows

homed in on Achilles' heels

those tired of cyclic fallows

cash in invernal white's wheals.

While food runs out

the hopeful hibernate

through winter shakeout

life to reactivate.

Until this cold snap round abates

mother bears sleep with their cubs

under bat clusters on cave architraves

and whip-poor-wills torpor-fall in shrubs.

Glory be to the yellow star!

Solar winds thaw the bell jar

Zephyrus files a counterclaim

despot's billowing cloak aflame

snowdrops end a Hyperborean reign.