Winter's Canopy

[virtuoso]

The sun's sparkling eye

now festered, its seething

beams dilated by briny props

A dull, gray sky covers;

the clammy underside of a

carapace shell shrouds;

the brooding clouds lower

their billowy masts,

their sappy brows wiping

chiseled limb lances, now

shorn of mercurial gowns,

No milk flows from sterile

paps; leafy garlands do not

emboss their trimmed cuticles,

and no budding fruits garnish

cropped tips.

Now bereft of the fluttering

carousel of birds, their

chirping anthem quieted,

the wind's bleary ensemble

rattles the sparse canopy;

gnarled tentacles sway above

the windswept deck, bristling

disheveled rows of brown fibers

matted to their frost-bitten roots,

a glum toupee tethered to a

withered crown. In the dry

frozen blades the buzz saw

bands of grasshoppers are

silenced, strident march of ant

columns summarily halted,

overhead, the rotors of whirling

wasps, bees grounded