Winter’s God, blow your nose on my rooftop like a glonnie shivering on the third day of withdrawal, begging through sneezes for white man’s change.
Tear my lungs out and use them as your handkerchief. Stuff them back in my chest trailing shimmering white snot with Rhyolite blood fault lines across my throat.
II.
Winter’s God, caress imaginations of babes with red and evergreen ribbons on street lights ballooning translucent golden halos against your nightly dandruff flakes.
Advent calendars are marked with tiny fingers and hymns sung with tiny voices in your honor countdown the stillbirth of your offspring, miscarried, misunderstood and exalted nonetheless.
III.
Winter’s God, indiscriminately strangle pipes until they crack and secrete into aquifers and Sioux burial grounds in South Dakota. Their weak craftsmanship and reasons for being are none of your concern.
Mass casualties occurred in your breasts and we wonder if you shed tears of ice as women and children were forced to walk long with muskets pointed at them as they fell starved and frozen in your embrace.
IV.
Winter’s God, you’re frail this year, barely mustering the strength to cover the highest peaks, your frost is thin and quickly fades leaving little trace of once raucous town closing tirades.
We are destroying you but it’s anything but personal, no more personal than silly ambitious corpses left as landmarks on your majesty’s Everest, green boots, red boots, festive and dead.
V.
Winter’s God, you are unhinged, unrestrained, indifferent, amoral but in the end, God. Should you perish by our hand, we murder our own design.
Winter’s God, we tremble under your power and beg to continue to fear your wrath and fury. Let us suffer our sins against you, let us repent of trespasses against you with fall after fall, foot after foot of unrelenting blizzard from October to March, from Winslow to the Blackhills, let us huddle in small corners in insignificant dwellings, allow us the privilege to feel awed, humble, and enveloped in the mercy of the season.
