When the World Turns Crystal

The maples empty themselves in silence now,

their final leaves not wanting to let go,

suspended, stiff, as if they've forgotten how

to fall. The garden rows lie fallow, and low.

The pond makes noises it has never made,

small fractures creeping outward from the edge,

a soft percussion, delicate as jade

snapping along an invisible ledge.

The air itself has texture, thicker, dense,

it moves reluctantly, as though it costs

something dear to shift. There's evidence

everywhere in the making of the first frost.

On every surface, patterns appear.

The windowpane becomes a theorem, proof

of mathematics blooming. Thirty years

I've lived here, never seen such patterns proof

themselves across the woodpile, the fields,

the pumpkins not harvested. Each object grows a skin

of crystal, intricate and Biblical,

as if the cold were voices seeping in.

The willow makes a sound like shattering,

but nothing breaks. Its branches, newly glazed,

collide in wind, a strange and chattering

percussion. Everything has been rephrased

in winter's dialect. The rain barrel wears

a lid of opacity. The gravel drive

has petrified. The clematis that climbs the trellis

looks embalmed, still reaching, still alive,

but locked mid-gesture, flash frozen in its climb.

The compost heap has ceased its smoldering.

No steam rises. There's no more time

for transformation, for the rendering

of waste to soil. Everything must wait.

The garden hose lies rigid on the lawn,

its coils unwilling to cooperate,

too stiff to move. The gentleness is gone.

Above, the clouds sit low and puffy,

a ceiling pressing downward, squeezing out

the space between the earth and sky. Now quick,

the daylight fails. There is no gradual rout,

just sudden dimming, as if someone turned

a dial leftward. Dusk at three o'clock.

The marigolds, once orange, now look burned,

their petals lacquered brown, their stems like shock,

still upright but no longer living. Stopped.

The birdbath holds a disc of milky ice.

The cherry tree's last fruit has dropped

and hardened on the ground, a sacrifice

to this new order. Every sound rings out

with sharpness: the gate's complaint, the snap

of twigs beneath the weight. Without a doubt,

the axis tilts. The season springs its trap.

The silent multiplies. No insects are singing.

The squirrels have disappeared. The world retracts

into itself, waiting for what must come,

the white erasure, the undisputed facts

of winter's governance.

The light goes flat. The change

arrives abruptly and obscene

in its totality, its ruthless, strange

insistence. Everything submits. The ground

refuses penetration. All goes still.

I stand here listening for any sound

of resistance. I hear none. And never will.