Winter Snakes
arrive
tight-coiling the night
like sky sinews
grounded, dark-wrapping the trees
with glass-shard scales
and the mountains, brilliant
in skin-shed waves
of translucent drape
send slides wind-lit, ashen and
thunderous, curling sea-soft
to mirror pale-stars in
spell-blanket light, cast over-all
strange
as familiars
among evergreen and dropped cone
lifting smooth-needled heads
to the ridge-returned sun
and uncoil
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