The Winter Council

Or, Where Darkness Holds a Different Kind of Light

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Though Momus calls from frozen heights above
and tries to dehort all who dare to love
with bitter words that cut like northern wind
I walk beneath where snow and earth are thinned

In subnivean chambers warm and low
where voles make highways under drifted snow
where roots still breathe and sleeping seeds perdure
I find what makes the killing season pure

The critic stands on ice and points his blade
at every heart that ventures unafraid
but I have learned what creatures know by birth
that life runs deeper than the frozen earth

Come rest with me in tunnels made of white
where darkness holds a different kind of light
and let this quiet refuge refocillate
the parts of us the surface cannot sate

For love like grass beneath the winter sheet
needs neither sun nor Momus to complete
its patient work of threading root through stone
of making in the cold a warmer home

The fault-finders above may think us gone
but we perdure like seeds that wait for dawn
and what they cannot see will not deter
the underground spring preparing to occur

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Written for the Save the Word Sunday — Week 13 Prompt from JC.