White Night

Trampling through the snow,

floating through the snowflake flurry,

I made my way to the edge of the neighborhood

where the houses ended

and the woods began.

It was late at night

and all the windows slept.

Step after step, I climbed

the spiraling incline

to the deserted train station.

The broken plastic waiting-chairs

shivered in the cold.

Beyond the train tracks

the forest sang—

a tangle of rough branches

dark and stiff and frozen.

In the far-off distance, veiled by night,

a behemoth of stone blinked a red eye:

an old mill, half-fallen into ruins.

I turned my gaze away from it,

I stood under the bright white light

of a solitary cyclops lamp.

All seemed as it was before:

the night, the white, the cold.

But when I turned again toward the tracks

she was standing there,

white and beautiful and cold

arrived at last from other climes

with her icy ways and windy chimes.