For Francesca

Tell me what the winter whispered to you
From icicles growing like candles, from deep snow
Like a frozen wave in the shadowed corner
Of the fence, from the last red berries
Glowing like flames in the faint cool light
Of an afternoon sun. Tell me it vowed
A god with wings like frost-feathers
Hovered in the storm and cried with winter’s birds
While you huddled inside the house and asked
Yourself if you heard a deity, or only the wind
Rattling the eaves. Tell me you stood
On the back step as light seeped out of the world
And let winter curl around your shoulders,
A cape of wonders shaking stars across the night.

© 2019 Jennifer Crow