He Who Yet Comes in the Valley of Snow

 1. A camphor biting glimmer 
Where the white flight, flickers
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
Sent by Old Man Winter


2. In the snowfall-bearing cubics
Refulgent flakes diffused their lumens
By the day's bitter frigid frost
Dispersing the township's movement.


3. Pressing into powder
From under hearth and stoop
A crimson hue stokes the coals 
Moved by winter shoes 


4. Above the heathen's head, 
A revelry in celebration
Raising horns to older gods 
& the easterly light rays bending


5 There was Lingonberry Meade,
Some libations, and some pheasant,
A long night of festive feast
Lambasting Christmas Present


6. In the whimpering of the trees 
Wrought from the hand that comes,
Repoussage in the ornament shapes
Reflect the future's thrum


7. A noxious green permeates
Along the garlands strung
A hush before the robin's song
Muting beat from a muffled drum. 


8. On houses draped in silent dread. 
No carols sang aloud,
Only the chatter of the dead 
flushing holes of the drowsy maus


9. Veins, on a single pane

Reach out for their hollied ransom.
A thronging knock of the shaded pall
Tolling the arrival of the phantom.

10. Heralded from a phrenic wold 
The specter breaches door,
The green, the blue, the gold
The oak, the sky, the Sol


11. Beyond frosted views of fern roads rooted
The smoke, the tree, and the limbs
In the publicus stands a gaunter greeting
The taker of a waggish spirit. 


12. In the tattered garb: where the grim resides
hovering over groaning wood
a chilling breath on winter's snow 
encased the space in soot


13. Tomtarna walkers 
Reindeer watchers
Feeders of sedge and shoots,
The larch, the herb, the parting axe
Felled: the boreal spruce


14 While the Yuletide mourned its dormant log
The deathly visage crossed frosted fog
The fireplace, cold, no flame to burn,
A tale of loss the chimney stirred.


15 With hollow eyes devoid of life,
Two geese follow the stroke of twelve
The silent shape pointing to Stave IV
Dead, as a door-nail..


16. Its spectral form drifts tonight
Beneath the boughs of deadened pine.
It drags the past on chains of fate,
wrapped in the plague of Marley's name.