Lightning from the East

The Winter Solstice nears, that day

When daylight scarcely lasts

For seven hours, and they say

The cold year's epitaph

Is written. Now the sun descends

Low in the Western sky

Beyond that distant hill, and sends

A chill through you and I.

Donne, with his talk of saints and squibs,

Of absence, lust, and death,

Paints my mind indigo, my ribs

Shivering as though a wraith

Passed through them. Far beyond the crown

Of trees, a fading howl

Afflicts the amber dusk that frowns

Against the evening's  cowl.

Now gold and grey sputter, subsumed

By black and indigo

In the deep night, as though consumed

By some chthonic foe

Out of the frigid North of lore;

For even now, the Wolf,

Glutted upon the rot of war

From sea to steppe, engulfs

The world, and in his bloodstained jaws

Maddened with carrion

And ravenous as Carcharoth's,

Rends life and limb. The end

May not destroy us all; and yet

The days of peace have ceased,

As valleys groan with dead, and wait

For lightning from the East.