The Unveiling

The ice on the pond is a cataract eye, unveiling the dark, silted secrets where the pickerel sleep in the cold. The edges are weeping into the mud.

A crow cracks the silence of the birch, shaking down the last of the rime. The sky is the color of a wet stone, heavy with the promise of rain.

Beneath the crust, the root-heads stir, pushing against the iron of the frost. A slow, green percussion begins in the throat of the waking soil.