Wintering

Outside the blizzard whips the eyes shut
like iron doors in catacombs.
In the tin air of winter
herds of trees starved and mad crackle at the sky.
The roads are closed, the powerlines are down.
The terraces slip into the low pressure
and one hundred years into the past when the world was black and white.
Even before the sun sets the street is not the same any more.
Gone are the rooftops, the drainpipes, the masts and the spires.
All is occupied by white.
Only the river ploughs on, brooding blackly.

My father kicks the snow off his boots,
his arms cradling wood to drive out the cold.
He starts a fire with yesterday's newspapers as kindling.
The headlines crinkle and darken and ignite,
"Lockerbie, Reagan, Afghanistan."

The cold smuggles itself in, underneath the doors, in the slightest crack.
Winds that have traveled from the Arctic, Siberia
places so cold the laws of physics warp,
where steel rails splinter, blue sparks rain from falling larch trees,
where mammoths are frozen in mile-deep permafrost for 10,000 years,
where it is night for months on end,
where sentries freeze solid standing at their posts
and words, breath crystallizes and falls to the ground
making a sound survivors call the whispers of the stars.
The wind scythes through the depths of taiga forests
carrying along all its dark mysteries
the Tunguska Event, Rasputin, The Lady of the Snow.
The wind is whistling through the keyholes.

My father is singing somewhere upstairs,
my mother, cursing, is searching for candles.
Wrapped in blankets we sneak peeks out of the corners of the windows
as if it is not snow out there but something else, something forbidden.
Ghost horses.

Outside the snow builds its minarets, its frozen empire.
By the hearth we dose, sleepdrunk in the swaddling heat,
hypnotized by the crackling fire to have visions of reds and greens and blues
as into the dream my father comes singing.

Darran Anderson

Comments from judge Bernard Henrie:
The two Honorable Mention poems are both strong and original with vision, power, scope. "Wintering" manages a skillful juxtaposition of the cold and outdoor elements against the growing warmth and intimacy of the family. The final images are original and moving.