Winter is Coming

Where it was once hot, it is now cold.

There are those that thrive in the heat,

their bodies built to sway and dance along
the silver ripples of refracted light

that shimmer up from the sizzling sand and scorched concrete.

Glittering in the sun, 

their spirits are a thousand facets of a crystal,

flashing light and warmth in a sparkling array
that sprinkles down into the soft soil
between their bare toes.

But even with all the grace of an island rhythm,
even with all their strings tuned to fever-pitch,
the sultry music of the fire-born
cannot be sung in Winter.

And where it was once hot, it is now cold.

When the Queen of Air and Darkness begins her yearly reign,
the children of Winter will emerge from the timberline
like great, gaunt wolves

hearts pumping diesel and antifreeze
breath spilling in thick tendrils of mist from their faces.

They are knowers of a more unyielding reality
where something as life-sustaining as water
may be cold-forged hard and sharp enough to draw blood
or bitterly frigid enough to rupture flesh cell by cell.

They are believers in a harder truth
where warmth is not given by the earth, but wrested from it,
generated by the kinetic pounding of their heart,
ignited with the jagged flint in their callused fingers,
stolen from their slaughtered prey's torn hide.

The strength of the Winterborn
is not in might, but in endurance
not in conquest, but in survival

it is the stubborn persistence of life in a rocky, barren waste
it is a refusal to bow before the skeletal form of Want and the bruising grip of Need

In the summer months, the winter is but a shadow
staved off by the sun like a dangerous animal held a bay.

But even at the height of summer,
at the sweltering apex of the heatwave,
a child of winter will grimace at the bright, smilling figures
twirling lazily in the sun
and remember the blunt, inflexible truth

That where it is now hot, it will one day be cold.